Use a headset with a hardware mute button.
You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
141–150 of 353 posts
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
In like 25% of my meetings, somebody is accidentally muted while they are trying to speak. The popup speeds up the process of them unmuting.
I still don't know how professionals keep making this mistake. Having used Discord for so many years, this has never been a problem aside from a select few people who had very clear reason to mute themselves. Meanwhile in professional settings, people seem to be falling for this over and over while lacking the common curtesy of not letting random environmental noise bleed through (read: their mics are barely ever tur…
People are not communication professionals. They are not ATC nor even pilots.
Still, PTT is the solution, preferrably in hardware. Not supported in sw anyway by e.g. Teams. In hw it keeps the mike-on symbol lit, and the device powered. Always having to push prevents ever forgetting to do so.
Discord's input handler sucks, uses semantic keys, not keycodes. Can't be mapped to an otherwise disabled capslock. TS and mumble can do that. Compared with those Teams audio looks like a toy.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once I was on Teams meeting and someone exclaimed “We can see your screen, systemvoltage!”. Sure as hell, I wasn’t sharing anything. Thankfully I wasn’t browsing HN, but writing code. These things implemented somewhere in the middle of the stack seems dangerous. I much more prefer a slider switch. Preferably made from real atoms and molecules.
Not long ago I dialed into a 100+ person, 3+ hour long quarterly planning type call. It was a video call, but I had to be in the car for part of the time so I dialed in. After sitting through over an hour, including the part I thought was essential to my team, I jumped off the call and proceeded to explain the shit show to my fellow passengers for 15m or so. When I got to my destination and pulled out my phone I disc…
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Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#144Zoom is really bad for this. On my old thinkpad there is a "mute" button on the keyboard. When you press it, it mutes the mic in windows sound settings and turns an indicator light.
I've had Zoom un-mute the mic itself with not notification to the user and the "mute" led even stayed on.
In old version of Zoom, the host could unmute you without your consent and this would unmute the mic at the system level too. I resorted to disabling the microphone in the Device Manager so it would show up as unplugged instead. This also disables the popup other commentors mentioned.
It looks like newer versions have unmute-consen which hopefully fix it, but the original behaviour made me feel uneasy and not trust Zoom.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a Zoom setting to Mute Attendees Upon Entry. I make that my default for every meeting. Some people complain, but I've had way too many people join and not realize their mic is live, so the meeting is interrupted by random dude shouting at his children to stop making noise, etc. Or even better, when the meeting tool has a "Call me at this number" tool, but does not require validation before bridging the audio.…
Huh, isn't this the default behavior? I never set that and all meetings I attended mutes me by default
Business users might get different defaults from their admin.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#146I always use my browser instead of these native apps precisely so I can deny microphone permission whenever I want it muted.
It would be nice if you could also have this level of control over native apps.
Once you use something like the Jack Audio Connection Kit it's hard to understand why a user-controllable system-wide audio graph isn't just the default thing baked into the kernel API.
I have full control over all apps. It involved some extra effort creating a fake ALSA device that sends/receives from JACK, but once it's in place, all audio connections become points you can easily make and break in the graph.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#147They are confusing the concepts of an app level vs OS level mute. If the app itself paints a mute button, of course there's no guarantee that it will do what it says. You have to trust the developers at their word, that they are actually ditching the audio feed coming into their application. Some apps even use the audio to provide useful functionality (like a "you are speaking while muted" notification). If you are really concerned about it, mute the app from system controls instead.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
In like 25% of my meetings, somebody is accidentally muted while they are trying to speak. The popup speeds up the process of them unmuting.
I still don't know how professionals keep making this mistake. Having used Discord for so many years, this has never been a problem aside from a select few people who had very clear reason to mute themselves. Meanwhile in professional settings, people seem to be falling for this over and over while lacking the common curtesy of not letting random environmental noise bleed through (read: their mics are barely ever tur…
It takes a long time for the masses to adopt software in the way you mention. I’d bet that discord users are not representative of the masses. The main reason I notice people talking while muted is 1) forgot they were muted 2) multitasking / distracted 3) unfamiliar with the software / how to unmute. #3 was probably #1 in summer of 2020 when everyone was just starting. The #1 and #2 I listed just happen. It’s common to never speak in a meeting. It’s common to never speak in a meeting and then randomly get called on leading to forgetting to unmute. It’s also common that your mic isn’t working and you don’t realize it until you do try to speak and everyone is say “you’re on mute”. This happens all the time with some Bluetooth Bose headphones and my work PC, some configuration has this device matchup to be a constant problem and my IT couldn’t care less about a permanent solution since they found a temporary one (reverts on reboot).
I know people that literally retired early when they were forced to use PCs in the office. Over 30 years later, many people can barely use the most basic features of their computer. All to say, I’m not surprised this is an issue and I don’t see people as a whole digging their way out any time soon.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#149They are confusing the concepts of an app level vs OS level mute. If the app itself paints a mute button, of course there's no guarantee that it will do what it says. You have to trust the developers at their word, that they are actually ditching the audio feed coming into their application. Some apps even use the audio to provide useful functionality (like a "you are speaking while muted" notification). If you are r…
Why wouldn’t said app also be able to programmatically unmute at the os-level?
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#150I feel like they're trying to make an insidious suggestion about the usage of these. IMO, there's likely a good reason - user experience. At a hardware level, grabbing the microphone can take time. Even worse that timing is inconsistent across devices, workloads, etc. That leads to a bad experience when unmuting and needing to delay your commentary. The solution to this is to keep the microphone on, but mute at a sof…
Teams has a notice that it pops up if you're talking and on mute, and there's another for if you're not on mute but your mic is producing no signal (mic has it's own mute). I find those super helpful, personally.
I also considered this, but the article is talking about audio _telemetry_, not that they're keeping your hardware mic "hot" locally. Audio detection like that could be done entirely locally.