35 pointsby c4lliope3 hours ago13 comments
  • Neywiny2 hours ago
    You can run zoom in the browser. At least you could some years ago. Encryption is relevant depending on what you're doing but not everything needs to be super secret. A common practice is to email or use secure file shares while on the call to maintain that security.
    • neilvan hour ago
      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.
      • QuantumNomad_an hour ago
        I already have Zoom installed on the work computer but for some reason it has started doing this weird thing where every time I click a Zoom meeting link in Google Calendar, Google Chrome downloads a copy of the Zoom installer at the same time as it opens the already installed Zoom. I didn’t notice until I already had six recently downloaded copies of the installer in the Downloads folder.

        No idea why this happens. But it’s probably part of the crappy pushiness of Zoom to get people to install their app that makes them trigger a download of the installer because either they are not detecting that Zoom is already installed at the right time, or they are so eager to download the installer that they don’t even care about whether or not you already have it installed.

        I’ve disliked Zoom since the beginning for their antics, and the only reason I have it installed is because I have to for the meetings at work, and the work computer belongs to the company I work for anyway, not to me.

        I would never install Zoom on my own computer.

      • jmathaian hour ago
        Small? Gawd, I hate doing that for every single Zoom call I have to join.
    • smoyeran hour ago
      You can also install and run Zoom in FlatPak which secures your computer by running the executable in BubbleWrap. If you know what you're doing, you can also sandbox it directly.
  • normie3000an hour ago
    > 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?

    • titanomachy15 minutes ago
      Sounds kind of like “Gypsy”, I guess.
  • mkmk2 hours ago
    Reminds me of the saying "Pessimists are often right. Optimists are often rich."
  • valicord2 hours ago
    How much time did it take to write this rather than Google "join zoom in browser"?
    • lithocarpus2 hours ago
      Genuinely curious as I don't know - could zoom not still record what is said and use that for their own purposes?

      I just assume anything said near a computer could be and likely is recorded and stored by somebody, nowadays.

    • quietsegfault2 hours ago
      “Dial into zoom using telephone”
  • smoyeran hour ago
    When Zoom took the world by storm due to the pandemic, they're security was known to be horrible. They aquihired the keybase team who are crypto experts and this presumably had some measure of positive effect.
  • comfrey112 hours ago
    Do you recall back in the day when zoom used to Root kit your computer?
    • yunnppan hour ago
      Yeah, that line, "people say Zoom is secure", instantly reminded me of how they opened a port on localhost that any website could connect to to run admin shit on the system. So I wonder, who says it's secure?

      Never mind the government surveillance.

    • SanjayMehta31 minutes ago
      I found a zoom daemon running on my kid's MacBook a year after uninstalling it. Turns out uninstall didn't kill background processes, needed a reboot to flush it away.
  • raw_anon_111124 minutes ago
    So at one point Zoom surreptitiously installed a web server on the Mac causing a security vulnerability

    https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/10/apple-removes-zoo...

  • neilv30 minutes ago
    If you have to take the call, and your main concern is desktop client malware...

    At a startup a few years ago, since I was the engineering dept., I had to be on a lot of enterprise sales/partnership calls, and much of the time we had to use the other company's favorite videoconferencing software.

    Rather than installing those dumpster fire apps on my Linux laptop that had the keys to our kingdom, I expensed an iPad that would be dedicated to the several icky random videoconf apps.

    We still get violated numerous ways, but at least compartmentalized from the engineering laptop.

    (I also used the iPad for passive monitoring of production at night, like a little digital photo frame in my living room, after putting away the work laptop.)

  • fydgdbfn2 hours ago
    it sounds like you don’t wanna talk to anybody, and nobody wants to talk to you.
    • worthless-trash2 hours ago
      Wouldn't that be nice.. people not talking to me in real life..
  • 3 hours ago
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  • Imustaskforhelp41 minutes ago
    I really love use fairmeeting.net as my jitsi goto server for any quick drawing board sessions or screensharing/video calling zoom alternative.

    I have used it for more over than 1 year/6 months with my friend where we both used and we used to very consistently think of how this service is free and how great it is etc.

    Thanks to fairmeeting.net ngl! One of the best services period. I wanted something in browser without too much hassle and something with a perma-link so I can join from different devices (I only had a pc back then and so I used to join with a kiosk tablet which only had browser & do other shenanigans)

    I found element calls to be interesting too but still personally I prefer fairmeeting.net! It's really stable when we used it for so many hours for so many days.

    I should probably donate to fairmeeting.net ^^

    If someone from the fairmeeting.net team is listening, I don't mind donating 10$ or such (yes a little broke haha!) to fairmeting if crypto option can be supported in the official website

    I do feel like there were some very minor features behind a donation paywall but honestly for 99.9% people its okay and what me and my friend used to do was use it with tldraw and make drawing boards and send messages with discord (I really wanted him to use matrix/we sometimes used signal) + fairmeeting.net + tldraw (before it required a sign in to create multiple pages, man that feature was so great for anonymous users)

    Anyways, I spent an hour or two trying to build a claude script which can make jitsi servers easier to deploy by using cloudflare api+dns feature & podman

    it's running on meet.fossbox.cloud enjoy everybody! (Please don't abuse it haha, sharing it in the same spirit as fairmeeting!)

    The script is Claude generated and under unlicense. Pasting both gist(github) and opengist(my server) links:

    https://opengist.fossbox.cloud/Admin/db747020aae14503b23e5a4...

    https://gist.github.com/SerJaimeLannister/d9f1511854b4dc5b17...

    > You can run zoom in the browser. At least you could some years ago. Encryption is relevant depending on what you're doing but not everything needs to be super secret. A common practice is to email or use secure file shares while on the call to maintain that security.

    Edit: Just wanted the last sentence to show Jitsi instance at https://meet.fossbox.cloud

    I kind of decided that I can help create an instance too instead of donating right away as my server runs <10$ (currently 8$ for 3 months 3 TB bandwidth everyday and afterwards a 100mbps cap plus more decentralization)

    Although I might shut down the server if I would need to utilize the resources though so if I ever do that, sorry about that!

    Alright time to sleep :> Good night!

    Edit: the server's xmpp isn't working, gonna try to get a fix of it before I sleep! (seems like I had proxy true and it had to be proxy false)

    Edit2: looks like its a bigger issue, I am gonna have to fix it later. Personally I don't know but I just like the workflow of using cloudflare api for dns management & building on it and I have built some other internal tools for myself for making ease of development so currently its gonna have an issue of self issued certificate which I will have to fix later most likely

  • SanjayMehta32 minutes ago
    We decline all US based video calls. Use our Zoho Meet or get lost.
  • JSR_FDED2 hours ago
    If you’re joining a zoom call but don’t enable the camera and only maybe plug in a usb mic - just don’t join?