Microsoft’s Edge browser has become a major competitor to Google Chrome, offering users a similar browsing experience that (mostly) exists outside of Google’s tracking and advertising infrastructure and requires fewer resources. One of the enduring benefits of Chrome, however, is the built-in Google Shopping tools on desktops and mobile devices that make it easy for you to shop online at the lowest prices – but Microsoft is steadily closing the gap with the introduction of the Edge Chromium version 91 update. This update adds two new shopping features for desktop users: a built-in price tracker and Bing Rebates integration.

While there are many third-party price tracker add-ons available for Edge, the Microsoft browser can now natively view a product’s price history while you shop online. To access it, open a product page at an online retailer, then click the blue price tag icon that you see at the end of the URL bar. This will open up the Edge Price Tracker, which will show you a graph showing how much the item has sold in the past and how the current price compares. You can also use the “Compare with other retailers” button to see what the item costs on other websites.

The menu also alerts you when online coupons or other discount codes are available, or if the purchase qualifies for the Bing Discount Program, which you can use when shopping through the Bing.com Shopping tab or in select online Shops receive cashback rewards. You must Sign in and activate Bing discounts and be signed in to Edge with a Microsoft account when you make your purchase to use the program.

The new online shopping features are available in the Edge 91 update, which also offers several other features and updates, including the Sleeping Tabs feature that increases memory savings by up to 82 percent, new browser theme colors, and a revised New -Tab page with advanced personalized content recommendations. Go to Settings> About Microsoft Edge to download the update or do a fresh install of Microsoft download page.

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Photo: Edgar BJ (Shutterstock)

Similar to chemistry, “good” cooking is about consistent, reproducible results that normally (at least at the beginning) require some measurements. The more you cook, the less you need to measure – but it’s always best to arm yourself with more knowledge rather than less.

That’s all to say I think you should measure your “pinch” of salt when a recipe calls for you. I know this sounds a little fussy, but this knowledge could come in handy down the line. For one thing: not every finger can absorb the same amount of salt, and a pinch of my small, stocky fingers probably does not mean a pinch of long, elegant finger joints.

If you’ve ever had to sprinkle a certain amount of salt over a specific area of ​​meat to dry it, this information will come in handy. For example, I know that my two-finger pinch swallows about 1/5 of a quarter teaspoon of fine sea salt. So if I want to spread 1/2 teaspoon of salt over a steak or chop, I know I need about 10 pinches that I can confidently grab straight from my salt cellar, eliminating the need for measuring spoons.

Knowing how much salt is in a pinch is also helpful when scaling up. Let’s say you happen to make a quarter cup of a real tapping vinaigrette; You know it took two pinches of salt to make it pop, and you know your pinch is about 1/16 of a teaspoon. The next time you make this dressing, you can get more out of it by using this familiar variable to ensure your recipe scales efficiently. (For example, if you want to make 2 cups of dressing, you know you will need a whole teaspoon of salt.)

You can also measure your pinch by mass (which Kenji at Serious eats does), but you need a fancy kitchen scale for that. Instead, I like to write down how many pinches it takes to fill 1/4 teaspoon and then do my calculations from there. It’s pretty picky – but sometimes a hassle can make your life a little easier.

Photo: Dima Zel (Shutterstock)

Today, even if you find it hard to focus on work after the long weekend that you hopefully enjoyed, a giant space rock screams through space at a “potentially dangerous” distance from Earth. The likelihood of a resulting Armageddon is (and always has been) extremely low, as the 2021 asteroid KTI is reported to fly within 4.5 million miles of Earth NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But on a galactic scale, such a distance is still pretty close, given the vast, spreading unknowns of the universe.

Even so, it is cold comfort to know that technically everything is fine, even with our space agency tracking a huge piece of rock hurtling at 40,000 miles per hour into “potentially dangerous” proximity to our fragile planet.

How big is the asteroid 2021 KTI?

On the large scale of asteroids – this is a terrible thing food for thought – it’s not that big technically, but that’s only when compared to other free-roaming space rocks that easily dwarf the tallest buildings on the planet.

For comparison: the asteroid known as 2021 CTI is roughly the size of the Eiffel Tower or Seattle’s Space Needle. That’s still pretty big, especially when you picture the Eiffel Tower hurtling towards Earth at 40,000 MPH. CTI will be followed by a few more asteroids, none of which are quite that large, but which are all likely to pass us harmlessly on or before Wednesday without penetrating into the atmosphere of our planet.

Even so, all of these asteroids are technically classified as Objects near the earth (NEOs), which NASA defines as:

An asteroid or comet whose orbit places it in or through a zone between approximately 91 million and 121 million miles (195 million kilometers) from the Sun, meaning that it is within approximately 30 million miles (50 million kilometers) of Earth orbit can fly by.

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How often do asteroids actually have contact with Earth?

Asteroids vary considerably in size and thus also in the severity of their impact on Earth. According to NASA, smaller asteroids, “several meters in size, are discovered several times a month between the earth and the orbit of the moon,” while even smaller meteoroids (less than a meter) come into daily contact with solid ground. These aren’t the space rocks to worry about; there are larger, more worrying asteroids catapulting through the cosmos. On the plus side, none (that we know of) will pose a risk to humanity for at least 100 years, the space agency claims.

Or, as the space agency says:

The highest risk of impact for a known asteroid is a 1 in 714 chance of impacting an asteroid named 2009 FD in 2185, which means that the probability that it could hit is less than 0.2 percent.

It is a very good thing that asteroids do not hit Earth with human regularity. For more than forty years it has been the prevailing wisdom among paleontologists and researchers that the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid that struck the earth. The impact was enough to wipe out the predominant species on the planet, with the exception of the avian dinosaurs.

Needless to say, a massive asteroid impact would likely lead to some sort of global catastrophe, if not the end of human civilization as it currently exists – but as long as NASA isn’t worried, you shouldn’t worry either.