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I'll pass on your zoom call

operand.online

61–70 of 74 posts

Re: I'll pass on your zoom call

#61
post #43

> If there's one that I really need to be on, I'm going to spin up a VM on my computer so that it has no idea of the other files laying around, such as my ~/passcodes.csv. If you are such a negligent bullhead as to get me onto your call, you'll be unable to see me because my VM cannot access my camera! By design! Same for my microphone, so I'll plug in a USB mic if I really need to speak up. More likely than not thou…

furthermore why would you give ~/passcodes.csv access to ~/nuke_launch_codes.csv and ~/incriminating_evidence.csv let alone connect the computer they are on to the internet

Re: I'll pass on your zoom call

#62
post #46
post #8

Reminds me of the saying "Pessimists are often right. Optimists are often rich."

As a pessimist who's often right, and not rich, this resonates. But how can this be true? Surely you get rich by being right?

Pessimists think nothing is worth doing, and are frequently right. But they will never catch the occasional thing that is worth doing. Some of the optimists will.

Re: I'll pass on your zoom call

#63
post #37

> Jitsi - their biggest offense in my book is their name, which is hard to say is or is not really offensive. And who can't remember not using a video conference app that didn't have an inoffensive name? If "jitsi" is offensive, who to? If not, which video conferencing app names are?

It comes from жици in Bulgarian, which means "wires". I think the author should remove that part of the blog post because it detracts from the author's point and is even a bit embarrassing that they hadn't looked it up. A reference for the name: https://desktop.jitsi.org/Documentation/FAQ.html#spelling

Thanks for the background. From the .si domain I'd assumed it was pronounced "Yitsi" not "Ðitsi".

Re: I'll pass on your zoom call

#64

Do people really still use Zoom in 2026? I hate Teams, but it's so common now that I can't remember the last time I ever took a call that wasn't on it. If I had to take one from another platform I'd assume it was sketchy!

Teams is needed if there are going to be lots of participants in the online videoconference (which was the only metric where Zoom trumped all rivals, especially during the pandemic lockdowns (when Zoom was the only videoconf app that worked for online classes or office meetings that could support lots (100+) participants), but its rivals quickly learnt to fix their issues and scale up, so they are good now.)

Otherwise Google Meet or WhatsApp are more than sufficient. They can support up to 20 participants with ease, based on my experience.

For bigger conferences, Microsoft Teams is the way to go. All it needs is the host to have an Office 365 subscription, then others can join on the browser or app with no restrictions.

Microsoft Teams offers a free version that allows users to chat, meet, and collaborate with others, although it has some limitations compared to the paid versions. The free version includes features like group calls for up to 60 minutes and 100 participants, along with 5 GB of cloud storage per user. Teams will warn in advance before the 60mins is up, so the host can simply end the Teams meeting session and start it again to get another 60mins of meeting time where everyone else can join in again.

No need for Zoom and its security issues.

Re: I'll pass on your zoom call

#66

> If there's one [zoom call] I really need to be on, I'm going to spin up a VM on my computer so that it has no idea of the other files laying around, such as my ~/passcodes.csv` Oh come now. You don't really think Zoom is exfiltrating unrelated files from your computer, do you? If they got caught doing this, it would be such a major scandal... why risk it? And even though the client is closed-source I do think they'…

They’ll claim the information was needed to protect the public from you, announce you’re the wrong sort of person and leak details about you to prove it, and a certain subset of hn commenters will show up to post about how the country is better for it (and it’s your fault for not using technology X to prevent the exfil.)

Re: I'll pass on your zoom call

#67
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still. There's a small dark pattern to discourage it, though. You go to the URL for the call, click the button to launch the app, and when that fails, you see a small link to do the call in the Web browser.

every once in a while, someone will ask me to screenshare on a shared monitor, then i will have to explain i cannot , because i am on zoom browser. Its always great to see the reactions that gathers. Its a true rainbow: bemusement, curiosity, exasperation, outright suspicion...and everything in between!

It works just fine? At least on Linux wayland it works in both firefox and chromium

Re: I'll pass on your zoom call

#68
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a pessimist who's often right, and not rich, this resonates. But how can this be true? Surely you get rich by being right?

Pessimists are just as often wrong too! Clearly the person you're replying to is an "optimist". :) To be clear, I don't think there's a strong correlation between being rich and being a pessimist/optimist. And to your original point, being right cannot possibly be biased towards optimism or pessimism. Any apparent correlation is more of a reflection on what everyone else thinks... and they are wrong! Cheers to being…

Agreed, optimism/pessimism is just about our disposition to the world as we perceive it (ie. glass half full or half empty). It is orthogonal to understanding and prediction. A perfect Buddhist is neither an optimist or pessimist but can still be better or worse at predicting the future.

I do think pessimists, especially of the depressive variety generally do not get rich. The reason is that getting rich is hard, everyone nominally wants it, so it’s highly competitive and there are no easy paths. To find a path generally you have to take an action that almost by definition is low probability of success. You don’t have to be a beaming cheerleader to make this happen, but being an eyore is most likely disqualifying.

Re: I'll pass on your zoom call

#70
Serious question: is there a good, native/desktop alternative to Zoom for a professional setting besides Teams? As much as I don't trust Zoom, a huge advantage is that it's not stuck to your browser tab, so when you're doing basic things like presenting you can actually see the other participants in the call easily (this is a huge issue I have with Google Meet, if you don't use Chrome it is honestly a fairly bad experience because it doesn't try to support picture-in-picture in other browsers, and its screen sharing UX as a participant is borderline terrible because of the way it dynamically resizes the sharing in some cases).
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