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0 pointspfranz5y ago0 comments

What are you advocating for? Either way business will continue; lock down security and people (and productivity) will suffer but still continue, ignore security and business will still happen. Different business will fail in each scenario, but the world won't end. Heck, force people to jump through hoops to support insecure software and work still gets done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22804208

I hope Zoom gets their act together because their competitors, with way more time and resources, suck a lot more. I don't think it's because of the difference in security--maybe it's because competitors were focusing on Enterprise or because it wasn't their core business?

I think each of those companies that have banned it make sense, even if that means the average person should continue using it. Zoombombing elementary school children because of a misconfiguration (or just because of the media reports) isn't a great idea and the security concerns warrant the rest. I still don't see much of an issue for other business and most personal use.

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walrus015y ago

I am specifically advocating that organizations with important data to protect take a more cautious and measured approach to installing software on their workstation computers.

If the very slight productivity hit from having slightly-more-blocky video chat in a slightly-more-awkward GUI client (google hangouts meet for gsuite, for instance, or Teams) is the make-or-break line between a company's continuing success, or not, with everyone working remotely, something else is fundamentally wrong that has no relation to any software package.

pfranzOP5y ago

That sounds like an appropriate response. I do think the BYOD push over the past 10+ years has improved Enterprise experience for end users and I expect things like Zoom and the current push for work-from-home does the same for working remotely.

I hope both Zoom improves their practices and other enterprise tools step up their game, too. It's been a joke that the first 15m of a meeting is spent getting things working for decades now.

Zoom seems to have spent time in some areas almost completely ignored by most others: Linux, more than a handful of simultaneous users, and poor connections (I feel like Zoom has other benefits, but these are egregiously bad with competitors). At my previous job it wasn't just slightly-more-blocky video chat in a slightly-more-awkward GUI client. We used our own equipment (and mostly used Linux in-house) and were spread all over the world (some countries had poor connectivity). We also had our company meetings via Zoom. We often tried other software and didn't bless any one of them, but I don't think any other single software would work. Without Zoom I imagine we'd do most meetings via voice--likely over POTS.

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