COVID-19 and Tech

TallerThanPedroia

Civilly Disobedient
SoSH Member
Jul 19, 2005
25,533
Boston
So everyone is throwing Zoom on all their devices and demanding I do the same. Any notable vulnerabilities? It seems to not be secretly owned by thecChinese government like TikTok at least.
 

Time to Mo Vaughn

RIP Dernell
SoSH Member
Mar 24, 2008
7,202
I've been using it for about 4 years. In general it's good software, both in quality and reliability. I expect it to follow the trend that all video conferencing software does and slowly degrade in quality with more bugs until a new video conferencing software becomes the standard.

In general minimal security issues, though they've had a few notable ones. Less so anything with remote code execution and more the ability to just spontaneously launch a zoom meeting with your video on if you had the plugin installed and went to the wrong page.
 

uncannymanny

Member
SoSH Member
Jan 12, 2007
9,078
Zoom has been more reliable than Hangouts so far for me. Plus I can change my background. I grabbed an office picture off our website to confuse the fuck out of my team this morning.
 

NDBoston

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 22, 2003
867
So everyone is throwing Zoom on all their devices and demanding I do the same. Any notable vulnerabilities? It seems to not be secretly owned by thecChinese government like TikTok at least.
Zoom's very security conscious (Fed Ramp Moderate, Soc2, GDPR, etc )and we have most of the Fortune 100 using Zoom including HSBC, Walmart, Capital One and very big financial firms in NYC who moved over from Cisco or Microsoft very recently.

They beat the crap out of our product to make sure it's safe. You're fine

Sorry, I slept all weekend (literally)
 
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NDBoston

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 22, 2003
867
Zoom has been more reliable than Hangouts so far for me. Plus I can change my background. I grabbed an office picture off our website to confuse the fuck out of my team this morning.
We now support video for virtual backgrounds too, so I have customers that taped their office at work and the video just keeps looping like they are there.
 

Fisks Of Fury

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2005
1,544
Plaistow, NH
We now support video for virtual backgrounds too, so I have customers that taped their office at work and the video just keeps looping like they are there.
Oh shit. This changes everything... I need to get a couple of Pats Superbowl highlights on a loop playing behind me for a couple meetings with some Jets-fan coworkers.
 

NDBoston

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 22, 2003
867
Oh shit. This changes everything... I need to get a couple of Pats Superbowl highlights on a loop playing behind me for a couple meetings with some Jets-fan coworkers.
https://www.pexels.com/ has some cool backgrounds and I used 4k Video Downloader to take content off YouTube (for personal use only of course). I think the Butt Fumble would be a tremendous video background.
 

NortheasternPJ

Member
SoSH Member
Nov 16, 2004
19,271
Zoom's very security conscious (Fed Ramp Moderate, Soc2, GDPR, etc )and we have most of the Fortune 100 using Zoom including HSBC, Walmart, Capital One and very big financial firms in NYC who moved over from Cisco or Microsoft very recently.

They beat the crap out of our product to make sure it's safe. You're fine

Sorry, I slept all weekend (literally)
They should be after the Web server crap on Macs from July and the security around that access.

We're a huge WebEx shop because we're a big Cisco shop, but if I had my choice it would be Zoom.

GoToMeeting and Skype can go die in a fire. I'd rather get COVID-19 than have to use Skype for a year.
 
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NDBoston

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 22, 2003
867
They should be after the Web server crap on Macs from July and the security around that access.

We're a huge WebEx shop because we're a big Cisco shop, but if I had my choice it would be Zoom.

GoToMeeting and Skype can go die in a fire. I'd rather get COVID-19 than have to use Skype for a year.
Webex has these types of issues all the time too but you're right, we need to do better.
 

AlNipper49

Huge Member
Dope
SoSH Member
Apr 3, 2001
44,851
Mtigawi
They should be after the Web server crap on Macs from July and the security around that access.

We're a huge WebEx shop because we're a big Cisco shop, but if I had my choice it would be Zoom.

GoToMeeting and Skype can go die in a fire. I'd rather get COVID-19 than have to use Skype for a year.
And they're trying to push Skype into Teams, which is an even bigger dumpster fire.

For all MS has done well the past few years their video/comms stuff is an unmitigated disaster.
 

NortheasternPJ

Member
SoSH Member
Nov 16, 2004
19,271
And they're trying to push Skype into Teams, which is an even bigger dumpster fire.

For all MS has done well the past few years their video/comms stuff is an unmitigated disaster.
Sorry you are right. Teams is the worst. I try to avoid it at all costs.
 

Red Sox Physicist

Well-Known Member
Gold Supporter
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
296
Natick, MA
And they're trying to push Skype into Teams, which is an even bigger dumpster fire.

For all MS has done well the past few years their video/comms stuff is an unmitigated disaster.
Dumpster fire that it is, Teams is much less of a dumpster fire than Skype for Business. I'm unfortunately forced to use them at work. We've been using Teams a lot with the work from home shift, and it's been much better. Skype for Business frequently eats messages. It pops up a notification, and then no message anywhere to be found. It decides to send one to my phone and the next to my desktop in seemingly random order.

At least Teams has a native Linux client, and I actually get messages and notifications.
 

NDBoston

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 22, 2003
867
Dumpster fire that it is, Teams is much less of a dumpster fire than Skype for Business. I'm unfortunately forced to use them at work. We've been using Teams a lot with the work from home shift, and it's been much better. Skype for Business frequently eats messages. It pops up a notification, and then no message anywhere to be found. It decides to send one to my phone and the next to my desktop in seemingly random order.

At least Teams has a native Linux client, and I actually get messages and notifications.
Teams is much better for chat but not for video. Most companies I deal with, use it mostly for file management and persistent chat.
 
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Fisks Of Fury

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2005
1,544
Plaistow, NH
Dumpster fire that it is, Teams is much less of a dumpster fire than Skype for Business.
Ain't that the truth. I do a LOT of remote meetings/presentations as part of my job, and have used almost all conferencing software at one time or another. We tried Skype for about a month (a couple years ago) and noped our way out that quick. Still, sometimes customer require that we use THEIR conferencing software for these sessions, and when I get a Skype link, it fills me with dread. The number of Skype meetings that have gone without a hitch is dismally small.

We WERE a WebEx for a long time, but made the switch to Zoom last year, and I've had a much better experience with it from a reliability and lack of glitchiness standpoint. We still use Teams internally for chat, quick file sharing, and one-on-one calls/meeting. But for everything else we've been using Zoom exclusively and successfully. I very seldom used the video feed on Zoom calls until recently when out management team suggested that we all try to use it whenever possible to present a more "personal" presence on our calls/sessions.

I know that the background picture of a warehouse full of toilet paper behind me on our internal team call yesterday was appreciated.
 

NDBoston

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Oct 22, 2003
867
29260


"Microsoft continuing to throttle down some functionality to deal with increased user load."