Srsly, all those neck beards who over simplify the problem with a flippant "don't use zoom", as if everyone has the luxury to skip every job interview and employer meeting that absolutely requires Zoom. I wish I could live in their world where every problem is solved by simply avoiding that problem.
Zoom isn't just a technical problem. It's literally malware. The list of issues they've knowingly caused and sometimes even refused to fix is endless. They have made it clear they absolutely don't care about security in any way and they've built their entire business around that.
As I work in cyber security there's no way I'll install that shit on my personal PC. Yes I could spin up a VM but I don't want to. I could probably use it over the web but that's it.
So I'd refuse and that company's reply should inform me whether I'd want to work there in the first place. If they insist their security practices will be so lax that I will be just spending my time cleaning up everyone else's mess. In fact any employer using zoom in the first place is a huge red flag.
I currently work for a huge multinational and they have the zoom client blocked through antimalware. Anyone wishing to use it with customers or suppliers must use the web version only.
This is a habit tech people fall into. "Amazon deleted my book" -> well just strip the DRM off it. "My ISP monitors me" -> well just use a VPN instead. "Ads make it hard to use the internet" -> well just use an ad blocker.
Ironically if more tech people just rawdogged the internet I think we would have more progress.
Just use a browser instead of some silly client, problem mostly solved. Use X11 or Wayland or whatever else you want, for God's sake. I don't remember any god ever claiming salvation lies in abandoning the most functional display server on the market so I'll just keep on using X11. If and when Wayland or some other alternative ever becomes as useful as X11 I might hop over but for now Wayland is a solution in search of a problem as far as I'm concerned.
It takes experience to learn why people call it the "bleeding edge". GPU acceleration is often broken in a lot of distros, and it is unkind to new users that have a panic attack dropping into a CLI shell.
LightDM at least works 99% of the time, being Cross-desktop one can select a Wayland session just fine (great when it is working), or fall back to a software compositor Cinnamon Desktop when things bork after an update. =3
Fine words, until the GPU driver goes sideways in Wayland. And... I like running multi-seat headless sessions on my local LAN hosts for several reasons. =3
My partial solution is to have the Android Zoom client on an idle tablet. Even though it is my office VOIP phone too, I power it off when I don't have meetings scheduled.
If someone tries to demand screen sharing, I ask one of my coworkers to drive, since they've joined from their laptop already.
I only launch the Linux Zoom client when I absolutely know I'm going to need to host a meeting and demonstrate software running on my end. I feel equally disgusted about Zoom and the corporate EDR agent. I basically feel like the most likely source of compromise of my laptop is these proprietary tools forced on me from above.
The thing that worries me is SSO for work. I wish there was a completely different identity for all the work-related apps and for my payroll/benefits portal. I.e. if they want to endanger my login that manages my work product, fine, but I don't appreciate them endangering my login that manages my own compensation, tax deductions and retirement transfers, and health insurance...
As an engineer I’d be impressed and would put you up to the top of the pile
Sadly I don’t run the company, and as a hiring manager that’s a great way to reduce my shortlist. We can’t have people like myself who ignore corporate policies.
If we are doing a survey of self hosted video conferencing services I would like to propose galene. Very easy to set up, I run it on obsd(an unsupported platform) and it just works.
Perhaps things have gotten better over time, but I did this 4 or 5 years ago and it was anything but trivial. I got it working, but it was a huge pain to set up.
The docker image build recipes should be easy to find these days.
Usually it is just local networking appliance rules that cause issues for some users. Likely a great learning experience for the uninitiated. Have a great day =3
Zoom also works on all browsers. Clearly you had a hot take, people corrected you, and now you're doubling down by suggesting, of all things, a Google product.
People were actually complaining specifically about OpenAI/Anthropic glazing and the countless influencer comments and posts here every hour.
And it's getting twisted into "People want HN without AI."
But that was never the case. I mean some surely do. But the blow-up this morning was specific to Anthropic ads to the point there's basically no information on this website that isn't related to Anthropic or OpenAI.
If it was announced some rando kid made a LLM in PHP or something, sure share it! If it was announced someone actually made something cool with AI (lol) then share it!
But Claude 24/7 aint it. It's at least extremely boring!
Sure. Now, how to deal with the entirely plausible situation where there needs not be any separation between the developer and the customer at all, thanks to AI.
I mean, sure, it would probably be embarrassing to have to say "because this was extremely stupid and nonsensical and entirely due to the weird hangups of the present guy in charge."
Perhaps the explanation is: to make space for other incoherent self-defeating policies like threatening the Fed that they'll increase tariffs if rates aren't lowered?
They're not weird at all given his worldview. It's Nazism. From his book to his public statements and actions, he consistently expresses this. The only thing he does not do is use the literal language that is not accepted. But the meaning and actions are the same. People are in denial.
Once again, all models are wrong, some are useful.
I suppose this one "fails" because of "granularity?"
I'm personally getting more comfortable with the "kabillion dimensional space" one. Even before the rise of this AI thing I'd gotten comfortable with (teaching in a very generalized way) the concept of matrix/vector math as doing this sort of thing.
Start with the math required to calculate "what the building on the screen looks like" when you're playing a video game.
Then I jump to...dating websites. You give it "dimensions" like height, weight, religion, sexual preference, music preference, whether you like long walks on the beach, whatever -- then you can calculate how "close" two people are to one another.
You kids don't get it, it's not about the tokens, it's about the principle of the thing. No self-respecting real programmer would accept the loss of even a few tokens over programmatic efficiency and cleverness.
It seems like it would be a mistake to say things like "it was for science and not religion" or vice versa. Additionally, also seems like it would be very hard to say "it was definitely not for eclipses," given the difficulty in proving the negative? Like, maybe it was and it just didn't work right.
What you're slightly more realistically looking for here is for publicly available data to have a Fair Use exemption for certain uses, which is certainly something worth discussing.
Because they can. There's no meaningful way to prevent them from doing so.
reply