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Comment by Joel_Mckay | Hacker News Reader

Spinning up a conference host for a small office is fairly trivial =3

Great, til I have a job interview and they use Zoom

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.

> I'd refuse and that company's reply should inform me whether I'd want to work there in the first place

This.

Develop sufficient leverage to be able to show basic respect the right way to do things - and yourself.

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.

"Hey, the beanstalks help you get to high places!"

"There shouldn't be any goddamned high places!!!"

Unfortunately, experience teaches people one can't affect political policy with gadgets, or deny human nature. =3

https://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidi...

Use a dedicated, otherwise empty account for job interviews.

Linux is multi-process, _multi-user_ since forever.

No need to leave a password manager, online banking, andwhatnot accessible in the background during an interview.

And yeah: stop. using. X11. For God's sake!

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

Wayland doesn't work stable in kde on my OS yet so I have no choice but to use X11.

However software just shouldn't be trash. No need to blame the display layer for this.

>And yeah: stop. using. X11.

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

> And yeah: stop. using. X11. For God's sake!

Why should I stop using software that is superior to the alternatives?

It isn't though. For example, the very article we are discussing.

Last time I looked they had broken copy/paste behaviour which dates back decades

If said copy paste behavior allows any app to snoop on any other apps' clipboard content without control, then it's been broken for decades.

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...

so? avoid it where you can

Spin up your own instance and ask them to join!

Great idea, if you want to stay unemployed.

How many corpo HR/recruiter types you met that will gladly bypass company policy and switch to the tools demanded by the candidate?

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.

https://galene.org/

Very nice option, as getting WebRTC built on pi/aarch64 with v4l camera hardware codec support was a slog through mud a few years back. =3

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

Ah yes Jitsi! I have been invited to meet on Jitsi 0 times.

https://meet.jit.si/humanphilosophersdisplaceround

first time for everything

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