Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A theory of Zoom fatigue

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 213 posts

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#161

Post by Soku39 »

djsumdog wrote: post #6

I don't know about those theories. I suspect something else. Do you remember landlines, and how responsive they were? You would say things back and fourth and the conversation just worked, even on three-way and conference calls? There was very little noticeable lag! Even in the early cellphone days, I'd often prefer using my landline. There was less lag. Cellphones felt like speakerphones where it tries to do that ca…

You'll be happy to know that Damon Krukowski actually covered this on his podcast ways of hearing, episode 3, entitled love, it goes very in depth on how "terrible" even today's cell phones sound vs a land line. https://www.radiotopia.fm/showcase/ways-of-hearing

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#162

Post by Bedon292 »

skyros wrote: post #150

Long time lurker, first time commenter. The original post and the comments here are interesting and intriguing, but many points raised here (a) assume that the initial proposition is in fact true, and (b) don't ask as to what evidence is available in support of the proposition (or indeed whether there is evidence that might appear to contradict it) beyond our own individual experience: 'Why is video-conferencing so e…

I think these are great points. I came to here to understand what people's feelings were on the matter. I don't particularly find 'Zoom' tiring any more so than a regular meeting. Is the problem these days just more meetings than there used to be? Because people are still trying to figure out the whole remote work thing?

And in fact I kinda like them better than regular meetings, because I can walk around the house and do whatever. But I also don't have a webcam requirement either, so maybe that's the difference for me.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#163

Post by zdragnar »

ken wrote: post #140
zdragnar wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be an issue with microphones or speaker quality? My fully remote team has used zoom for all of our meetings, and unless someone is calling in from a cell phone in a busy area, I don't recall a time when I have had difficulty understanding someone. If anything, the fact that everyone has their own microphone makes it better than in person meetings, because you never have to struggle with that one person who d…

It’s possible, but then why is it $1000 smartphones are struggling with this, and $5 landline phones from 1993 did just fine? Did Apple skimp on audio hardware that bad? That’s a little hard to believe.

Aside from the sibling comment's point, the majority of your $1000 smartphone's cost is large, high resolution touchscreen, ever-higher quality camera, and ever thinner case and battery to power them.

As for Apple in particular, it is worth pointing out they have a hard time getting laptop keyboards right, when keyboards in the general sense have been working fine for decades. They make tradeoffs for other values (thinness) and the product suffers as a result.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#164

Post by lisper »

notacoward wrote: post #121
killjoywashere wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the military. I have found that the habit of saying "over", learned as crowded circuit management for open radio circuits, is quite useful in teleconferences and VTCs, and for similar reason. It makes it clear that you're handing over the circuit. "Out" means you're leaving the circuit.

I think that can work well, as long as people also adopt the military/aviation habit of speaking crisply and not rambling on to hog the channel until they're absolutely sure they've emptied themselves of every possible thought they could ever have on the matter. Like I just did with every word after "rambling on". ;)

Yeah, this. The experience with overseas calls I was referring to was talking to my then-girlfriend who was spending a year studying in France. Saying "over" all the time is not very romantic.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#165

Post by lisper »

frereubu wrote: post #160
lisper wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have very clear memories of my first overseas long-distance calls in the 1980s, which were over a satellite link. The latency was so pronounced (about half a second) that carrying out a conversation took quite a bit of practice. You almost had to carry out a formal protocol of handing over control of the line, as if you were on a walkie-talkie. I have equally clear memories of my first overseas calls carried by und…

In the early 1990s I was sharing a flat in Edinburgh with a guy who's dad was working in Nigeria. The delay was routinely 4-5 seconds, which almost always took us a frustrating 30 seconds or so to sort out while we went backwards and forwards, both saying "no, you start" at the same time, leading to 10 seconds of silence, then both starting again...

4-5 seconds??? How is that even possible (with 1990s technology)? Even round-trip light time to the moon and back is less than three seconds.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#166

Post by wintermutestwin »

The elephant in the room is the lack of EYE CONTACT. As a mediator now having to work on video, this is very close to a deal breaker. We don't hear much about it on tech news because no one has a mass market solution. A google search will find either a wasteland of dead SW and HW products or room based systems that are so expensive that they are typically bought by globals for CxOs.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#167

Post by mhh__ »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #141
londons_explore wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should note that most landlines have significantly more delay than they used to have 50 years ago. All landlines now get digitised and packetized, and usually go over an IP network, frequently via the landline companies HQ hundreds of miles away, before heading back to your neighbours house who you were calling... Data is the same - If I ping my next door neighbor, from my broadband connection to his, it goes via…

> Data is the same - If I ping my next door neighbor, from my broadband connection to his, it goes via London (my ISP's headquarters) and Manchester (his ISP's headquarters) before coming back to him, with a round trip latency of >20ms. In sound terms, that delay is like him standing in the next room over. I feel like that would be enough to be basically perfect, though. If only we could cut down on everything else i…

I think the rule of thumb I used to go by when recording myself playing guitar was that 20ms was a noticeable delay, 100ms was sort of tolerable and anything more than that was enough to make my picking lose synchronization.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#168

Post by RHSeeger »

m463 wrote: post #155
djsumdog wrote: post #6

I don't know about those theories. I suspect something else. Do you remember landlines, and how responsive they were? You would say things back and fourth and the conversation just worked, even on three-way and conference calls? There was very little noticeable lag! Even in the early cellphone days, I'd often prefer using my landline. There was less lag. Cellphones felt like speakerphones where it tries to do that ca…

I would go further - yes lag, having to deal with delays and jump in at the right time is fatiguing - audio - auto-muting, inexact codecs, compression artifacts, bad echo cancellation - small screen, and mismatched eyes - there is also etiquette. inadvertent - people who talk too loud or don't understand the lag or don't notice their drop outs should-know-better - people who use speakerphone and inflict it on people…

> people who use speakerphone and inflict it on people

To be fair, this varies by speakerphone. I use a landline phone with a high quality speakerphone. As far as I've been told, the quality is as good as possible (limited by the line I'm dialing into).

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#169

Post by mhh__ »

saurik wrote: post #78
hunter2_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no compelling reason we couldn't have IP audio links (with an easy calling interface) that have no such compression artifacts. I would actually call it more of a noise gate issue perhaps trying to save bandwidth by maximizing the compressibility of quiet parts as if they're total silence, signal off. That kills the intimacy IMO. We've had it for so long now with digital cell phone calls, even HD calling, cert…

The process of waiting to create the first packet to send (even with no compression) will always be slower than a system where you just send the audio instantly as an analog signal. Even the process of waiting for a single "sample" of audio (for a tiny tiny packet) is technically slower (but of course no one does that: they tend to group together at least 2ms of audio into a packet). The only way you can go faster th…

It would depend on the characteristics of the transmission line used to transmit the signal.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#170

Post by mhh__ »

saagarjha wrote: post #91
saurik wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The process of waiting to create the first packet to send (even with no compression) will always be slower than a system where you just send the audio instantly as an analog signal. Even the process of waiting for a single "sample" of audio (for a tiny tiny packet) is technically slower (but of course no one does that: they tend to group together at least 2ms of audio into a packet). The only way you can go faster th…

I believe the velocity factor actually depends mostly on the dielectric insulator used.

Not sure why you've been downvoted, it's at least partly true with my idealised understanding of transmission lines
Post reply on HN