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Comment by nilkn | Hacker News Reader

Zoom is such a bizarre product. For huge video calls, it tends to perform as well or better than everything else out there. Yet at the same time it literally seems like straight-up malware and seems to violate your trust and privacy left and right every step of the way, even in the installer (!).

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To be fair it does perform better than everything else, which is why people are so forgiving of it, but it still doesn't excuse their ineptitude on privacy and security.

Yeah. Security and privacy preclude performance. Like ... i dont need a Ferrari with an activated self destruct. ill take the camry, thanks.

More like all glass Ferrari vs all black Camry. People are choosing Ferrari

the Ferrari is noted for an unfortunate tendency to catch on fire and burn to the ground...

In my experience Google's Hangout Meetings have been at least as good or better quality and the interface is far superior in my opinion. For example it works in the browser without any plugins (even in Firefox.)

The quality send to suffer when there are a large number of participants.

Which is the reason zoom gets used so much.

My company uses Google meets and it works flawlessly with more than 100 people in a call. Automatic integration with GSuite and Chrome box are an added bonus.

Does it have the advanced features present in Zoom? At my $WORKPLACE we use the Spotlight feature so to ensure everyone is watching the right person (fairly important as we have lots of Deaf people and they all need to be watching the person signing) and Breakouts to set up discussion groups. While we don't have 100+ participants, we do have up to 25 active participants with lots of turn-taking (and not e.g. 100 watching 1 stream). Other platforms we tried didn't have these and made it difficult for participants especially those who aren't great with tech. Also helps Zoom seems to work well with video—other platforms we tried were great for audio so fine if you just need to listen to people but woeful with video making it a no go for meetings involving people who use sign language.

I believe Hangouts pioneered that feature (way back when).

Does everyone have fast computers, great internet connections, and/or use only chrome browser?

Last time I used meet it tended to turn my laptop into a fireball, even with just one or two other participants.

I haven't used Hangouts on a professional setting in a while. Does it finally support tile view? Another feature I find really valuable is allowing two windows. One for participant view and a separate one for shared screen.

yeah we use it. Not sure if this is still hangouts or something else underneath, but meet.google.com is the url which allows you to quickly create a session and share it. You can present your desktop using a separate tile.

Nope. Have to resort to chrome extension to get the tile view.

When not in presentation mode.

it does on the hangouts for business (ie google meet) but then only for up to 4 other users

Zoom also works in the browser (though they really push you to the app).

I tried Hangouts recently and the quality was terrible compared to Zoom. Discord was far better than Zoom though.

better to ask forgiveness?

Really? I think hangouts performs much better. Zoom performs like crap, why no hardware video encoding?

You need to sign into to google for hangouts though. You don’t need to sign up to attend a zoom meeting.

It was one of the fastest-growing SAAS companies before coronavirus hit despite all the free competition.

The reason? "It just works."

It's clear their singular focus on making it "just work" for even the least tech-savvy users has led them to prioritise user experience over security/privacy. I imagine a rebalancing is coming.

Hopefully soon! A signal-like group video package that "just worked" with some processes for key verification would be outstanding.

Materially misrepresenting the product is not "prioritizing UX", it's lying to your customers.

Only the host needs an account though. For hangouts or FaceTime, everyone needs to sign up to Facebook or Google.

The age old question: is it bad because there are bad actors involved or is it bad because it's new and cheap and the maker views security etc as a Nice to Have.

Ever used IDA Pro?

Please elaborate

IDA Pro is an reverse engineering tool sold by Hex Rays, which, for the last decade or two has been the the go-to software for security research, with very few actual competitors in the area (though this has been changing recently, depending on who you ask and what your needs are). It is fairly infamous for its exorbitant price (many thousands of dollars) and the company's extreme willingness to go after "pirates" (a term which is somewhat loose and is quite a bit broader than "people who use IDA Pro without purchasing it") and their inclusion of fairly invasive DRM reminiscent of malware.

Let me just add (in addition to what you wrote, all of which I've experienced) that I literally (using the term correctly here) had to /beg/ them to take my money ($7500, I think).

Very long story, but long story short, I needed the tool urgently (this was pre-Ghidra), like hours & days mattered. I am a small company, they were "skeptical" of me and my intentions, they demanded all sorts of paperwork and IDs, etc. It was seriously as though it was a dark comedy nightmare.

Everything you wrote is true. So many people fellate IDA given the chance; I don't know what they're smoking. The product is clunky and ugly (but it mostly works), but as you said, it's got very little competition. I and a few of my colleagues (and many here on HN) could probably do a better job, but I don't want to live in that world.

Man, I think I got pretty far afield there, but your comment resonated with me. Thank you.

Oh yes, I have heard this too. I know some people who have been “blacklisted” from ever buying IDA because Hex Rays thought they had “associated” with people with pirated copies. They are very selective with who gets the software and how they can use it…

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