Several things that made the SD card annoying to developers.

First: you could not install an APK on the SD card (probably due to DRM reasons). So if you had a larger app and you wanted users to be able to take advantage of the additional storage offered by the SD card you could not do this simply by having a large APK. (Note that this also was true for phones that had no removable SD card but had internal memory that presented itself as ‘external storage’).

On some phones the normal storage was so small that any larger app had to leverage the external storage to be able to even fit (we’re talking 10+ years ago). The way to do this was using so-called ‘expansion files’. These were additional data files, up to 2GB a piece, that could be installed on the external storage. These came with some additional difficulties.

• They were pure data files, so they could not contain any executable code. They were just big binary blobs, so none of the Android built-in mechanisms for loading assets depending on screen density, screen size and all that stuff worked. You had to do it all by hand.
• Since they were just binary blobs, you had to do any organization inside the files yourself. For example, they could be large ZIP files but you had to do all the ZIP handling yourself. Compared to normal APKs that are also ZIP files but where you can just load stuff from the APK archive and it’s all handled by the framework.
• The expansion files were separate from the APK. The Play Store did try to automatically download them if your app had expansion files, but this was not guaranteed. Furthermore, because they live on an SD card they could disappear at any moment. Your app needed additional logic to deal with this, code to re-download the files if they were missing, code to handle errors during the download, UI to show the download progress, etc.

Another problem with SD cards was the huge variety in quality of SD cards. Phones internal storage is reasonably fast, but you never know what kind of cheap-ass yanky SD card the users installed in their phone. This caused all kinds of performance problems in more demanding apps and as a developer you had to deal with the fall-out (bad reviews, support requests, etc.)

• Losing SD Expansion sucks; they should bring this back. Only reason they stopped this is greed.

Fuck that noise. SD expansion was a terrible idea and I’m glad it’s gone. There are so many problems introduced by removable storage, it was a terrible PITA to deal with as a developer. One of Google’s dumbest ideas in early Android. Good. Fucking. Riddance.

Oh I agree they should. Physical game sales are a PITA.

I bet that hardly anyone buys the add on drive and they use that as a reason to completely drop physical media support in the PS6.

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Plenty of good people wear a suit and tie. Plenty of bad people wear something else.

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It’s a result of the “first past the post” voting system used in the US. It naturally leads to a two party system.

You are confusing how you wish the world worked for how the world actually works.

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Well, if you put it in the picture then it must be a good argument.

/s

Just because one side is not 100% perfect doesn’t mean you have to support the side that is 100% bad. If you’re waiting for the perfect candidate who matches your beliefs on all point before voting you’ll never get to vote.

The problem is that the billionaires get to decide how the money is spent, instead of ‘we the people’. You are basically giving them control over how that tax money is used.

More like billionaires donating ‘charities’ that push a certain agenda, e.g. the NRA, instead paying taxes that can be spent on things likje public schools or libraries.

Or they just create their own ‘charity’ that supports whatever political goals they have.

So… wtf is the problem? They’re donating. Why aren’t you happy?

It’s another way billionaires are taking away power from the common people. They are donating money and reducing their taxes by doing so. What it effectively means is that instead of the democratically elected government deciding on what causes that money is spent on, the billionaires get to decide instead.

Ah, never seen those. I don’t think we have anything like that over here in the Netherlands. You just scan the barcodes and put it in your bag. Alternatively you can grab a handheld barcode scanner at the entrance and just scan and put the stuff in your bag as you shop.

I’m a Mac guy so I’m a bit out of touch with the state of PCs. I know PCs usually are a few years behind technology wise, but I’m kind of surprised they still don’t have bluetooth as standard. The technology is decades old.

And if you fuck up even a tiny bit, it starts screaming that you are an idiot loud enough for the whole store to hear until an attendant comes to help.

What is there to fuck up?

One of the worst pieces of UX is when you turn on subtitles in the phone app. It will pop-up a banner that says something like “Subtitles turned on” that appears on top of the fucking subtitles and stays there for about 3 hours, making it impossible to read the subtitles. Why is there a banner for this in the first place, I know the subtitles are on. First of all I was the one that turned them on. No need to inform me. Second of all I can tell by the fact that there are subtitles on the screen.

What bloody UX genius came up with that crap?

$250 for glasses like that is very cheap. I also have bifocals, not the thinnest lenses either, IIRC they were one step up from the standard ones. A light frame but nothing special, the frame was like €100, the entire set of glasses was around €650. The lenses only have a cylinder in them; no prisms or anything like that. If you need more complicated or stronger/thin lenses they can easily go over €1000.

Even if you have the optional insurance for it, that doesn’t really help you. The amount they cover is basically the same amount you pay for the additional coverage. You’re better off putting the money in a savings account earmarked for your next set of glasses.

Also, if you need anything but the most basic single focus lenses without any cylinders or prisms, get them at a real optician. The online store can’t properly measure where to place the lenses in the frame (they need to be properly centered in front of your pupils).