Ask HN: What is the worst communications tool you've ever used?
6logicallee85/10/2025, 7:47:14 PM
And what made it so bad?
Comments (8)
joey_spaztard · 37m ago
CB radio
Specifically 27MHz CB radio.
People miles away can hear your conversations with your friends.
Sometimes in the daytime the radio signals bounce off the ionosphere, the noise level goes way up and local chatting range is reduced because stations from 600 miles to thousands of miles away are coming in.
In the days when it was popular trolling assholes would jam and disrupt. people up on a hill with an illegal high power amplifier talked over people.
In the 1970s and 1980s high power AM transmissions sometimes blasted out of the neighbors cheaply-made hifi or scrambled their TV picture.
The eleven meter wavelength means you need a reasonably large antenna for good performance.
These days it is local CB is almost dead in most places and the noise level is often high in towns due to every house having a dozen switch mode power supplies and other electronics, which really reduces the range.
Decades ago, when it was popular, it was chaotic. Some CB radios did not receive well if someone nearby was talking within a few channels of you. Meet ups at pubs sometimes turned into fist fights.
These days, in most of Europe and the UK you may sometimes hear the last few old men and crazy nitwits that still use CB radio but they are often far away and a legal 4watt radio does not get out far enough for anyone to hear you.
romanhn · 3h ago
Lotus Notes. It tried to be everything and was good at nothing.
mattl · 28m ago
Lot of people are very fond of Notes and Domino. I've barely used Notes.
more_corn · 1h ago
I installed teams for a client. I was surprised how badly it could do something so simple. And the standard operating temperature of my machine went up ten degrees.
mattl · 4h ago
Microsoft Teams
silisili · 45m ago
Seconded. I had heard the rumors and thought they were overblown. No, it's really that bad. It's actually baffling, and I'm confused how such a thing was ever greenlit much less released.
Specifically 27MHz CB radio.
People miles away can hear your conversations with your friends.
Sometimes in the daytime the radio signals bounce off the ionosphere, the noise level goes way up and local chatting range is reduced because stations from 600 miles to thousands of miles away are coming in.
In the days when it was popular trolling assholes would jam and disrupt. people up on a hill with an illegal high power amplifier talked over people.
In the 1970s and 1980s high power AM transmissions sometimes blasted out of the neighbors cheaply-made hifi or scrambled their TV picture.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
The eleven meter wavelength means you need a reasonably large antenna for good performance.
These days it is local CB is almost dead in most places and the noise level is often high in towns due to every house having a dozen switch mode power supplies and other electronics, which really reduces the range.
Decades ago, when it was popular, it was chaotic. Some CB radios did not receive well if someone nearby was talking within a few channels of you. Meet ups at pubs sometimes turned into fist fights.
These days, in most of Europe and the UK you may sometimes hear the last few old men and crazy nitwits that still use CB radio but they are often far away and a legal 4watt radio does not get out far enough for anyone to hear you.