TheRealEdAbbey

In America, "large metropolitan area with passenger train service" is the exception, not the norm.

The problem is there isn't really much of a market for something like that. Sure, you can have detailed documentation on such a product that explains how it's functioning, why it might drop out when your ip changes, etc., but who is going to understand that? People like you and me, yes, but we're a pretty small market.

In order for there to be a reasonable audience for a product, you have to target the least knowledgeable person - or at least someone pretty far south of the median. Those people aren't going to understand what's happening, and they're going to get upset each time their ip resets and they can't connect to their thermostat anymore. They're going to take the frustration to the thermostat company, they're not going to understand what the service rep tells them, and they're going to return the product, leave a bad review, and buy a nest.

No one wants to be in the position of making and selling such a product. That's why you pretty much need to make your own with an esp8266. And that's why so many of these IoT devices end up being far too bloated.

Essentially, yes. My guess is that it's due to the fact that amateur radio for a long time has been CW and SSB, where there isn't much bandwidth issue. Digital modes are the new kid on the block (especially considering the average age of US hams is probably quite high), so rather than addressing the root issue, they decided just to target that new kid.

There are bandwidth restrictions on the 60m band, where amateur radio is secondary.

Yep, PSK31 has a baud rate of 31.25 - that's literally 31 bits per second. There's no practical use for that in modern commercial or consumer applications.

In amateur bands, symbol rate below 28 MHz is limited to 300 baud.

A GRB hitting earth wouldn't actually cause an immediate extinction event. From Wikipedia:

> Earth's atmosphere is very effective at absorbing high energy electromagnetic radiation such as x-rays and gamma rays, so these types of radiation would not reach any dangerous levels at the surface during the burst event itself. The immediate effect on life on Earth from a GRB within a few parsecs would only be a short increase in ultraviolet radiation at ground level, lasting from less than a second to tens of seconds. This ultraviolet radiation could potentially reach dangerous levels depending on the exact nature and distance of the burst, but it seems unlikely to be able to cause a global catastrophe for life on Earth.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst

The long-term effects are what could kill us, namely, the destruction of the ozone layer.

They honestly read like clickbait: "10 myths programmers always assume - #6 will SHOCK you!"

Perhaps, then, twitter is not a malady but a symptom. The idea that we can whittle all of our ideas down to 140 characters has been building for decades, as you say, and only now manifests itself explicitly.

I don't think it's too nostalgic to pine for longer, epic exhortation of ideas. People still give memorable speeches (cf. Obama's "More Perfect Union"), and people still memorize the speeches of old. They give context to the soundbites and give depth when we want to go beyond the misquotes. But yes, blaming twitter goes too far, because it certainly has its place, too. It's just another tool of communication that has its benefits and pitfalls.