You're thinking only of rounding to 0. In this case the rounded increment can be 0 or 5. The system batkiwi suggests is the sensible way to do that.

A quick search seems to suggest that the cash equivalent of 1300 points is around $0.80, so they're not exactly breaking the bank with their offer.

There are things you can redeem for 1300 but it's mostly charitable donations and entries into sweepstakes until you hit ~1800 points.

In the UK it costs 1,860 points to get a £1.25 gift card for the Microsoft Store. That is not a typo; you can redeem a £1.25 gift card. Perfect Christmas gift for the the people in your life that don't matter to you.

Why should Google complain? They are free to do the same thing with Chrome if they want to; e.g. Play Store points for using Chrome.

To "de-license the Edge clone" they would have to change the license of Chromium from the BSD 3-Clause License, and I would bet all my money that they are not going to do that. There are - I'm guessing - hundreds of downstream projects that would be affected by a license change.

Given that Edge is Chromium-based, I don't see what the benefit is in disallowing Edge on the Internet but allowing Chrome. Technically, it seems like a distinction without a difference. Functionally, you are just replacing one data siphon company with another. From a security perspective, if a vulnerability affects Chrome it will almost certainly affect Edge too since they share most of their code.

We only allow Edge here, which was largely my decision. Not because I love Edge - I certainly don't use it at home - but because it's functionally 100% compatible with Chrome, it's already installed in Windows so we don't have a second browser to keep updated, it integrates nicely with M365 services, and we don't need to install (and keep updating) Chrome's 3rd-party templates to apply policies.

When we ditched Chrome we got a small amount of pushback from a handful of users for completely arbitrary reasons that they couldn't articulate, and then everything just carried on as normal. No tickets saying "this worked in Chrome but not in Edge" because... that just doesn't happen.

If we used Google Workspace then Chrome would make more sense, but we don't. We're already sending all our data to Microsoft - why would we want to add Google into the mix when, again, there is no benefit to us?

You might want to look into how it works before trashing it.

https://ninite.com/help/how-ninite-works/

Ninite doesn't supply the installers, it downloads them from the publisher's site every time. It just uses whatever switches or parameters allow the software to silently install and disables any optional cruft or bundled nonsense from the installation.

Further, all you need to do to get it to update all the apps you selected is run the exact same Ninite executable you already downloaded. It'll go off and get all the latest versions and update them. The Ninite installer you downloaded a year ago will download the latest versions of the same apps you originally selected. They do not become obsolete - the only exception is if a package is removed from Ninite.

Ninite is the first thing I download on any new personal Windows machine I set up. In minutes I have 95% of the applications I need.

Yep, they've been gaslighting me for years with this. Come back in the morning to see the machine is still on and think "Hmm, I guess I must have clicked Restart by accident". Nope! Just MS doing their usual bang-up job with testing.

Which one? You have Windows Update, which updates separately from WinGet, which updates separately from Microsoft Store, which updates separately from Edge, which updates separately from Office, etc.

There is literally no way to coordinate updates for everything in Windows. I battle with this every day trying desperately to keep our client estate updated and as vulnerability-free as possible. It's a goddamn nightmare.

I think those days are gone. They're never going to roll back from the always-online, Microsoft account required, upsell everywhere, telemetry everywhere, shoving ads onto your menus, AI-infused garbage. We've seen the least user-hostile Windows; it's been and gone and it's all downhill from here.

You should remember. 95 was a bona-fide phenomenon. People queued up to buy it. It was hotly anticipated and it absolutely took the world by storm. It certainly wasn't perfect, but it was a huge leap forward from Windows 3.11.

n/t

If a school gets pwned by a student, that's the school's fault. Not even necessarily the IT team's fault; if teachers leave their login details lying around that's not on the IT team, that's a failure to follow IT policy. If your IT policy doesn't say "don't leave your password lying around" then that probably is the IT team's fault - unless they couldn't get leadership buy-in, which is definitely possible. Some places treat teachers like royalty and such cruel restrictions would simply be beyond the pale... if you work at such a place, I feel your pain.

Of course, I'm not saying the little scrotes should be trying to hack their school but if they can do it then literally anyone can do it, and that is the problem.

Go into any supermarket in the UK and look at the shelves. At least 33% of the pre-packaged food products will be screaming "PROTEIN!" from their labels in big bold letters. You want yoghurt with 50% more protein? How about some soup, now with 34% more protein? Chocolate pudding with 68% added protein! Protein pancakes, protein cereal, protein bars, 500g of protein in every 100g! COME GET YER PROTEIN!

Every product that could possibly

have protein added to it has had it added and used as marketing. Somehow, somewhere along the way, the brands managed to convince the masses that protein was the answer to all their health problems. It's really ramped up here in the last few years, to the point where there are entire sections of shelves just dedicated to protein-added versions of existing products. I think because adding protein to things is very cheap and it fools people into thinking that it's beneficial to health, many companies have jumped on the bandwagon.

I avoid the protein-added products because I suspected they were a scam and something like this would eventually come out. Nice to be vindicated for food-paranoia once in a while.

Only if you assume every citizen of that country wholeheartedly supports the actions of their government.

The only places where that has ever been true have been the "sovereign nations" that amount to a redneck's shack with barbed wire and a load of misspelled signs around it, and even then they probably have moments where they privately wonder if their government might be insane.

It's nuts how not too long ago, progressives complained about centralized internet services, lack of net neutrality, the copyright cartel and the centralized financial system, but all of a sudden they love all of that once they realized they can use all of that to shit on the civil rights of people they don't like, because pesky things like the bill of rights gets in the way of them having the government do it.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I'm 44. I'll still take a window seat every damn time. As a non-frequent-flier I get very few chances to experience these views so they're novel and exciting, even over the ocean. Plus, as a Scot, being above the clouds and actually being able to see the mythical sky fireball makes for a pleasant change.