Is there a comprehensive list of all CCP-favoring [self-]censorship incidents involving major entities outside of China? Leica, Mariott cases come to mind.
Blizzard
Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
241–250 of 562 posts
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will say Google Meet has gotten much better since the pandemic started, e.g. support for many more participants in its grid view.
Is Google really any better? They may simply be better at hiding their surveillance apparatus. We need to decentralize, i.e. destroy large non-decentralized organizations.
No it is not. I'm planning on switching to jitsi for my personal and non-profit projects, and I guess I'll advocate for it at work. Switching from Zoom to Google/Microsoft/Cisco anything is like switching from Evian to Aquafina.
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
As much as I don't like consolidation of tech, I've had really good experiences with Google Meet. No scummy practices like forcing users to pretend that the app installer doesn't download just to connect from the browser either. What are Zoom's advantages?
The main reason I liked Zoom was because it was so easy to install. I've had zooms with non-technical people over 70, and not one of them needed help installing it. The same cannot be said of Google. Heck, as a technical person I have trouble getting Google Meet to work consistently. That was Zoom's main advantage -- their ease of setup and use, and "it just works". We now know that part of the reason that is the cas…
Am I the only one who finds Zoom more difficult to use than Google Meet? I am not a regular user of Zoom, and do not want to install the app on my computer, but Zoom apparently requires the meeting organizer to go into their settings and enable a "Join from your browser" link for participants [0]. This is quite user unfriendly, and if I have to watch some seminar on Zoom I can't be asking the organizer to enable this option.
Note this is coming from someone who uses Firefox and Duck Duck Go to resist Google's monopoly (i.e., I'm not a Google fanboy.)
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#244> "We are outraged by this act from Zoom, a U.S company," Zhou and other organizers told Axios in a statement. "As the most commercially popular meeting software worldwide, Zoom is essential as an unbanned outreach to Chinese audiences remembering and commemorating Tiananmen Massacre during the coronavirus pandemic."
I understand the sentiment, but I don't agree that Zoom is essential. Jitsi is a fine alternative. It's perhaps not as polished Zoom, but that's a fair tradeoff here, I think!
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will say Google Meet has gotten much better since the pandemic started, e.g. support for many more participants in its grid view.
Is Google really any better? They may simply be better at hiding their surveillance apparatus. We need to decentralize, i.e. destroy large non-decentralized organizations.
US citizens have a significant better chance at fighting a warrant. Personally, we've been using Jitsi for video. It's not amazing, but it is free in many senses of the word.
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've tried Google Meet, Jitsi, and some other things, but Zoom is the only service that my 6+ year old laptop can handle for more than 5 min without nosediving into 100% CPU usage and freezing up. Does anyone have other suggestions? Either for other services or for troubleshooting Jitsi?
You could give Whereby [1] a try. I really liked it when it was named "appear.in" (that's now a completely different company), and used it for a bit, until my work switched to Teams. Whereby is, as far as I can tell, completely owned by a Norwegian registered company. 1: https://whereby.com
A Whereby-developer here. It's awesome you recommend us. You can turn on "mobile mode" in advanced device settings, and it should be a bit better. But we're a bit limited in how CPU-friendly we really can be, living in the browser. Not that we can't improve, there's certainly extra tricks we could try - but not easily without also lowering fps and resolution.
I don't think "low resource use" is a big selling-argument for our product. Video can be quite heavy.
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Either it is E2E encrypted, or it is unencrypted on zoom servers and the only claim that they can reasonably make is that they haven't provided their employees with the tools to observe a call invisibly.
This is addressed in the Alex Stamos twitter thread. It _is_ E2E encrypted. And from what I understand the "promise" is a technological promise, not a process promise; you can check the exact terms of the promise in the paper.
The paper’s ideas are not yet implemented. Right now, it’s encrypted to whatever keys Zoom likes, including the PRC’s. Same system as Apple’s or Google’s
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've wanted to like Jitsi, but the quality difference with Zoom is noticeable. Same with Google Meet and anything I've seen that uses WebRTC. They remind me of RealPlayer back in the early 2000s in terms of blockyness. I would love to know about any Zoom competitors, free or paid, with comparable quality.
Jitsi Meet works fine as long as you do not use Firefox. W.r.t. the general meme about WebRTC, this is old (2018) and explicitly does not claim to be anything other than suggestive: https://jitsi.org/blog/a-simple-congestion-test-for-zoom/
I had some issues with Jitsi on Brave but it worked fine on Chrome
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree with what you are trying to say, but being snarky is against the hn guidelines. Edit: “against” is too strong a word - it isn’t a hard rule but I often see the hn community react negatively to sarcasm and snarkiness even though the content may be worthwhile.
It is a hard rule! https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I thought the the word “guidelines” usually implied something more flexible. Thank you for the clarification (I certainly appreciate the limited snarkyness and toxic sarcasm within the hn community).
Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event
#250I've always been sketchy of Zoom after finding out it was started by a Chinese national when this is one of the top recruitment avenues for Chinese espionage agencies.