Conference call simulator • Hacker News Board

Re: Conference call simulator

#101

Post by spookthesunset » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 4:59 AM UTC

phyzome wrote: post #34

7ewis wrote: post #13

Do people still do conference calls nowadays? Using Hangouts has kind of eliminated the conference call problem for me. Audio quality is great, you can see who is speaking or know who wants to speak if the mute icon disappears.

Hangouts is a conference call, so yes. :-) Audio quality is variable. Sometimes there's serious lag. Screenshare often gets stuck. Sometimes Hangouts (well, now it's Meet) goes split-brain and some people join to find no one there, even though everyone else can see each other. Browser support is hideously narrow. Unmute sometimes doesn't work. Oh, and the worst part: There are all these pesky humans involved! Serious…

Don't forget all the feedback loops and weird echos. I still don't know what causes all the echos.

Plus the second somebody says something important, the audio drops out or gets choppy.

Yeah.... we have a long ways to go for conference calls of any type....

Re: Conference call simulator

#102

Post by itomato » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:04 AM UTC

I'm billing for this.

Re: Conference call simulator

#103

Post by toomanybeersies » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:20 AM UTC

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #36

Oh, man. I wrote this thing with my buddy @weinventyou.

This is incredible. One of the best pieces of internet art I've seen in a long time.

Re: Conference call simulator

#104

Post by hegz » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:32 AM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #91

This is a nice reality check for remote-work partisans. Yeah, we have the technology, but in practice you get this...

Thats why async systems like issue trackers work well. Also has the benefit of having everything written down and searchable.

Re: Conference call simulator

#105

Post by thisisit » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 6:34 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #79

nickjj wrote: post #77

I was only able to get through about 30 seconds before cringing, but does it eventually include someone who spends 10 minutes eating an apple dipped in dorito chips? It's always the person who has a $500 microphone set up too, so you get to not only hear them chew, but you can even hear the inner workings of their esophagus swallowing every bite.

> does it eventually include someone who spends 10 minutes eating an apple dipped in dorito chips? My favourite was a conference call on which, for ten minutes, we heard someone’s three year olds puking, crying, screaming and crapping themselves while the mom tried to clean up with the mute button accidentally disengaged.

That was my life, nearly every week. We had someone who doesn't mute and his kid will be crying all through the meeting. People tried reminding him couple of times to no avail.

Later, the teleconference software added a button where the organizer could mute everyone and we could solve this problem.

Re: Conference call simulator

#106

Post by Q6T46nT668w6i3m » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 12:58 PM UTC

arrakeen wrote: post #97

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #36

Oh, man. I wrote this thing with my buddy @weinventyou.

my voice is in there :)

ilxor?

Re: Conference call simulator

#107

Post by phyzome » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 1:10 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #101

phyzome wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hangouts is a conference call, so yes. :-) Audio quality is variable. Sometimes there's serious lag. Screenshare often gets stuck. Sometimes Hangouts (well, now it's Meet) goes split-brain and some people join to find no one there, even though everyone else can see each other. Browser support is hideously narrow. Unmute sometimes doesn't work. Oh, and the worst part: There are all these pesky humans involved! Serious…

Don't forget all the feedback loops and weird echos. I still don't know what causes all the echos. Plus the second somebody says something important, the audio drops out or gets choppy. Yeah.... we have a long ways to go for conference calls of any type....

We get echoes when someone's mic is too close to their speakers, or doesn't have echo cancellation, etc. If you get echoes, there's someone who needs to mute. :-)

Re: Conference call simulator

#108

Post by qmr » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 3:42 AM UTC

dharmab wrote: post #65

TeMPOraL wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a guy with a mechanical keyboard on the team. After a while people just started muting him in Hangouts. It's not even the mechanical keyboard itself that's the problem, but the way it interacts with whatever noise-filtering algorithms Hangouts runs.

I love mechs. I hate that no business VoIP app has push-to-talk. I keep having to switch windows to unmute, talk, and mute myself.

> I love mechs.

Your office neighbors do not.

Re: Conference call simulator

#109

Post by dharmab » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 4:25 AM UTC

qmr wrote: post #108

dharmab wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love mechs. I hate that no business VoIP app has push-to-talk. I keep having to switch windows to unmute, talk, and mute myself.

> I love mechs. Your office neighbors do not.

Nobody minds since we're in an open office anyway so everyone has to wear headphones to block all noise to get any serious work done.

Or, y'know, we work from home.

Re: Conference call simulator

#110

Post by rozhok » Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 8:20 PM UTC

flipp3r wrote: post #15

Almost real, it's just missing loud audio feedback loops.

>just missing loud audio feedback loops

I've got one!

This is absolutely awesome piece of art. I've worked at the BigCo for the 7 years (switched to startup a 3 years ago) and this site turned me on so much nostalgia.