this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
262 points (96.8% liked)

Technology

58306 readers
3847 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Microsoft guts Microsoft Rewards points, and its fans are outraged::Microsoft appears to be nickel-and-diming users and fans of its Microsoft Rewards program, which gives "frequent-flyer" points that can be traded in for gift cards.

all 41 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ioslife@lemmy.sdf.org 94 points 10 months ago (2 children)

This was the only reason to use Bing for a long time

[–] db2@sopuli.xyz 45 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It still is, but it was too.

[–] beerclue@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

[–] gekkonaut@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

there are six ducks out there, and they all want sun chips.

[–] ohlaph@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

And Voss, those thirsty bastards.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Bing, uh, has it's uses. IYKYK.

[–] Anomalous_Llama@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Don’t think Bing has been good for that for some years no?

[–] winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 10 months ago

Pretty sure he's talking about using bing video search for porn.

[–] Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Bing's fine in general. Meanwhile any time I get curious and use Google, if I have to go deeper with anything past the first 2 results, it will be absolute garbage.

[–] 9up999@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

I prefer qwant. Based in France. EU privacy law.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Works great for me. LOL, tried DuckDuckGo today for giggles, no joy. Even with safe search off, same exact results.

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Failed for me, even with Safe Search off. Same results.

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago

I see a lot of genitalia with DDG’d search

[–] JTskulk@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Let's make a replacement program for Free software. The more points you get, the more Free software you can install.

[–] kurwa@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

That makes the software not free though 😥

[–] darelik@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

It's not free, it's Free^TM

[–] joyjoy@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That's impossible because my time is worthless.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 2 points 10 months ago

The points are measured in gigabytes of storage on your hard drive

[–] netchami@sh.itjust.works 30 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

I remember using this (cheating a little bit with VPNs and proxies so I could claim the rewards like 20 times every day, because they are separate in every country) to get some Xbox giftcards

I also had ~15 Microsoft accounts and I put them all in a Microsoft family so I could transfer points from one account to another, it was really fun lol

[–] RagingInside@lemmy.world 102 points 10 months ago (3 children)

This is why we can't have nice things.

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 32 points 10 months ago

I mean in their defense, fuck Microsoft with a rusty nail, and this system was basically designed for exploitation.

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, this is why systems that aren’t rigorously designed to preclude exploitation like this simply shouldn’t be released. If flaws like this exist in the system, they will be exploited. It’s not on the users if they exploited a flaw, even if you say “please don’t exploit the flaw”.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 3 points 10 months ago

There's a continuum between this kind of thing and, say, ransomware attacks. I'm not sure where the line should be drawn.

[–] Welt@lazysoci.al -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Microsoft Rewards isn't a "nice thing".

[–] DesolateMood@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Idk man I get free game pass every month and people much more patient than me have been able to get entire free consoles. I'd call that pretty nice

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 39 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

You sound like part of the reason they gutted the thing, then.

[–] grayman@lemmy.world -2 points 10 months ago

They're giving out made up points and then letting you trade them for copies of digital files. They're not really losing much.

[–] stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

People like you are why normies can’t buy pax tickets. This isn’t simmering to be proud of, you should be ashamed of abusing a system.

[–] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

For ones where they give you a code for a non-MS service (eg LoL or Overwatch tokens) couldn't you bot-farm this and then literally just sell the redemption code?

[–] netchami@sh.itjust.works -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you actually started selling these, they would probably shut that down pretty quickly and maybe even sue you

[–] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 months ago

Obviously. Don't get caught.

[–] Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

Meh. This seems relatively minor, and geared towards people purposely gaming it. Which, yeah, I've done at one time or another. Lately I've just been getting the points from searching. It might take a couple extra days to get enough for each $5 gift card. Oh well.

[–] iegod@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago

This headline reads like blogTO.

[–] kbtaco@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

I’m most disappointed with the cooldown between searches. The lowering of points was expected as they were cutting back everywhere else.

[–] Pxtl@lemmy.ca 5 points 10 months ago

I mean I've bought 2 Overwatch passes using those points. I couldn't justify paying cash for skins to myself, but MS rewards points I could rationalize. But I basically fire up Edge/Bing to collect the points and then go back to Firefox & DDG. It was obviously not sustainable for them.

[–] FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Bummer, I was going to check this out too