We're in the era of 4k and 8k monitors. That character limit only occupies a tiny fraction of any modern screen.
So odd a site dedicated to future technology companies isn't even caught up with modern display techniques, let alone ones that existed some 2 decades ago.
To be fair, on mobile the title lengths staying reasonable really helps HN homepage readability.
Also even though new such hardware is cheap for our western standards, its a mistake to think this is valid for entire world for various reasons
the site is intentionally anachronistic precisely because the people here understand technology