Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern • Hacker News Board

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#181

Post by youeseh » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

freeone3000 wrote: post #25

youeseh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those that haven't tried Jitsi - my friends and I catch up on it almost daily. It is awesome. The phone app is great too. You can setup a room that people can jump in and out of, which is pretty convenient. If you're looking for that office feel for your small team, then Jitsi might be worth a shot. And, I think you can host your own server if you'd like to!

Jitsi makes one of my friend's MacBooks fan too loud so we can't use it.

Perhaps your friend would benefit from the phone app. I use it on an old iPhone SE and it works for hours without issue.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#182

Post by lifeisstillgood » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

maest wrote: post #170

hooande wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a large inconvenience and a disruption, but that doesn't justify one private company being considered critical infrastructure. This view is generally antithetical to innovation. Even if everyone already knows how to use Microsoft Office, it can and should be replaced if better software comes along.

To be fair, Excel is pretty much critical infrastructure at this point.

I think that's not true until Office365 kicks in. If Microsoft "goes down" today, just gets wiped out by some futures FX swap gone wrong, then all the Hedge funds, the doctors notes, the airplane checklists, they will pootle along fine for years.

It's only when a central single point of failure is introduced does critical infrastructure become ticking time bomb.

An open source peer to peer zoom would reduce such risk - and any sensible government would find that - cries of private business be damned

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#183

Post by hooande » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

scottlamb wrote: post #180

hooande wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a large inconvenience and a disruption, but that doesn't justify one private company being considered critical infrastructure. This view is generally antithetical to innovation. Even if everyone already knows how to use Microsoft Office, it can and should be replaced if better software comes along.

> This would be a large inconvenience and a disruption, but that doesn't justify one private company being considered critical infrastructure. Is "critical infrastructure" some sort of official US Government designation? What automatically happens in response to this designation? Note that: * I only said teachers sometimes can't teach when it's down—a claim of fact, not any suggestion of how it should be handled. * T…

You made a very compelling case about why it would be difficult for everyone to switch between software like the root comment describes.

But the article goes a step further and says that Zoom specifically is of critical importance. I don't think this is true. Zoom is a brand, not a unique technology. If they suddenly made everyone pay $50/day, the world would switch to alternatives very quickly.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#184

Post by scottlamb » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

forgotmysn wrote: post #111

scottlamb wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other. I think it's for real. Think about elementary school instead. The kids are just learning to use computers. Their parents may be also, and if not they may be trying to do their own work fr…

the kids in elementary schools were born into the digital age. they're digital natives from the get, and are probably more comfortable using digital tools than we are

I think this belief in "digital native" supremacy is magical thinking:

* Most kindergarteners are illiterate and innumerate. That alone severely limits their ability to quickly navigate an unfamiliar, complex UI, much less the extensive number of relevant abstract concepts and references they've yet to learn about.

* I've never bought into the "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" mentality, especially when simultaneously discarding the value of transferable experience. My senior-citizen parents know how to use iPads just fine, thank you. My dad started programming in the punch card days and has at least used computers almost every day since; don't you think there's some relevance to more modern computers?

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#185

Post by scottlamb » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

hooande wrote: post #183

scottlamb wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This would be a large inconvenience and a disruption, but that doesn't justify one private company being considered critical infrastructure. Is "critical infrastructure" some sort of official US Government designation? What automatically happens in response to this designation? Note that: * I only said teachers sometimes can't teach when it's down—a claim of fact, not any suggestion of how it should be handled. * T…

You made a very compelling case about why it would be difficult for everyone to switch between software like the root comment describes. But the article goes a step further and says that Zoom specifically is of critical importance. I don't think this is true. Zoom is a brand, not a unique technology. If they suddenly made everyone pay $50/day, the world would switch to alternatives very quickly.

I think it's a question of timescales, disruption, and definition. If Zoom were totally unreliable or became expensive, within a quarter almost no one would use it. In that sense I agree with you. But the next week would be a disaster, and that may be enough to call it "critical infrastructure", whatever that means.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#186

Post by scottlamb » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 11:18 PM UTC

ssivark wrote: post #123

scottlamb wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other. I think it's for real. Think about elementary school instead. The kids are just learning to use computers. Their parents may be also, and if not they may be trying to do their own work fr…

Then that would be part of essential learning experience (not being locked in to arbitrary applications) —- as important as reading and math. If Zoom goes down, so long as there’s some other service, the teacher can send out URLs to the class via emails, and people should be able to get setup quite easily, and help each other out. There will be some corner cases which will involves a bit more of a struggle, but it sh…

> Then that would be part of essential learning experience (not being locked in to arbitrary applications) —- as important as reading and math.

I'm already sad about the time my son is spending learning about video chat etiquette instead of in-person etiquette or reading and math. Even as an ex-SRE who likes to be n+1 on many things, I can't get excited about kindergarteners spending extra time learning _another_ app. Packaging it as an essential learning experience about vendor lock-in isn't going to change that.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#187

Post by scottlamb » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 11:29 PM UTC

cmroanirgo wrote: post #159

impendia wrote: post #71

I don't buy it. The same factors that made Zoom easy to adopt, make it equally easy to switch to something else. And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other.

Not having used zoom, what does it do that the open source, self hostable jitsi meet does not? I feel that jitsi for some unbeknownst reason is ignored in favour of zoom, but don't understand why.

Short answer: bandwidth. Longer answer, a set of questions:

* Do most teachers and/or students have sufficient upload capacity to send n-1 copies of their video stream in an n-person chat? (A 20-person chat might be typical for a K12 classroom.)

* Is it possible to do multicast across the Internet?

I assert the answer to both questions is "no", so all the video streams need to go through a server/reflector. You're suggesting that self-hosting; a follow-up question:

* Does your average school district have the bandwidth for simultaneous duplex video streams for every student and teacher?

* Would they be able to acquire this bandwidth quickly?

Also no.

I've never used jitsi and don't know if there are other problems, but this one's a dealbreaker anyway.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#188

Post by cat199 » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #157

m11a wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am still confused how Zoom ended up being used this much, especially by less technical people. The UI is not intuitive at all, the options are a mess, and the product doesn't even know what audience it's trying to cater for. Every other Zoom call I've been in someone is having a technical error or confusion (even technically-inclined people). That considered, at least in principle, it shouldn't be that hard for a c…

Everything else was (and most still is) much, much worse. It somehow disappeared from communal memory, but before Zoom, it was common for the first 10 minutes on any group skype/hangout/webex/gotomeeting call to be all about making sure everyone is heard and seen. And with Zoom, it went down to an acceptable 1-2 minutes or so. Others have slightly improved their game since, but not much -- I still occasionally get Me…

also call quality seems to be better or hold up better

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#189

Post by Fr8TRN » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 11:57 PM UTC

The pandemic has increased the load of data collection especially of students in classrooms. Four years ago we were appalled that china was putting cameras in classrooms. Now we are putitng cameras on every individual child with audio and absolutely no regulation or organizaiton structure.

The pandemic has significantly increased an already high level of data collection. Does anyone think government should have a role in regulation?

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#190

Post by unethical_ban » Sat, Aug 29, 2020, 12:06 AM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #44

A bit tired of the "critical infrastructure" argument. People are very quick to put all sorts of things into the category. He mentions network effects as the only real moat in the article. If Zoom fails at being a product, people will move away.

It isn't the same as the Internet in general.

In the short term, it is critical infrastructure. Take Zoom offline permanently, tomorrow, and let us see how the world will handle it. It would find alternatives, and competitors would fill the void, but it would undeniably cause massive disruptions to industries and education. There isn't much of a failover right now for video calling - people have put their eggs in one proprietary basket with no backup plan.