Slack launches Huddles, Discord-like audio calls you can hop in and out of | Hacker News Reader

Slack launches Huddles, Discord-like audio calls you can hop in and out of

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69 pointsGarbage21 comments

I honestly can't believe it's taken them so long. It's a killer feature of discord, and the Slack audio calling at the moment still feels clunky and unreliable.

Every big Slack update, I've been disappointed that the calling hasn't been overhauled.

The only other thing I want from Slack is to be able to invite guests (proper guests, not guest accounts) into calls/meetings. Our customers use Teams, and it's a nice experience being able to join a meeting without an account or downloading some meeting app. It's the only reason why we still use Zoom.

AirSend is able to invite guests for audio like discord/Slack huddle. Not only that external customers can join public online meetings (audio/video) without an account using AirSend. (Note:https://www.airsend.io/blog/index.php/2021/06/30/create-publ...).

Agreed.

Imho kinda crazy the zoom slack integration works better than slacks own native calling function.

I really like this idea and think it would be very useful for our team. I do worry how well it will work because I've never used a less reliable voice chat in my life than Slack calls. My entire team has problems with it about half the time and it has never gotten better.

I wish discord would support fast account user switching. I vastly prefer it to slack but I also enjoy having good workplace hygiene so having my gaming friends pop up during my work hours is less than ideal.

Agreed, I don't love the fact that my username is tied to all my discord activity. For my friend-based Discord's that's fine but for larger communities or ones that I'd prefer to just be anonymous it's annoying that I either have to tie it all together or I have to log out/in constantly.

I use the Discord PTB (public test build) and the stable client to separate out personal and professional.

It's less than ideal though, it would be so much better if Discord supported multiple accounts

I use Discord in different browsers to keep separate accounts active at the same time. It works pretty well in Firefox and Edge. Running in the browser also means discord can't snoop on what apps you have installed or what games you're running and report them back to home base which is another plus.

I’ll have to give this a try. I already use it in a browser since for some silly reason the discord Mac app blocks virtual cameras like GoPro or manycam.

you can also use Firefox containers to keep it all within Firefox

You would enjoy Firefox Containers!

Not supporting multiple identities is discords biggest feature gap IMO.

On windows you can use sandboxie to start multiple instances in parallel using different credentials, but it's somewhat annoying to use and breaks occasionally.

You should try running your Discords in Firefox Containers [1]. Even if you don’t use Firefox to browse, it’s superior to Sandboxie for containing multiple Discord instances.

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

I'm sure to a lot of people this may not seem like a big deal. However I think this makes a huge difference in lowering the friction to quickly hop in/out of audio. It seems minor but is pretty transformational in how remote communication happens

Isn't this how Ventrilo, Mumble and TeamSpeak have worked since decades ago?

Isn't Ventrilo, Mumble and TeamSpeak just a digital version of a party line[0]?

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_(telephony)

poor choice of name. probably many non native english speakers don't know what it means and sounds like a lazily made up word to them

So basically, it's just a slack call with the video off?

I don't think so, it's more like a Discord Voice Channel - ie it's always on, and you can enter or leave whenever without needing to start up or tear down a call or invite anyone

You can also be in one alone to signal "I am willing to have a conversation right now" and people who want that too can just join at will.

Tech-wise, maybe, culturally it makes a difference.

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