Work from home tech thread

Tried to use WhatsApp video call for small group. Audio was terrible (noisy). Couldn't hear even 1 word! Zoom was better.

Has anyone with a Macbook had an issue where Zoom does not release the audio input/output after the app is used? For example I do a Zoom conference, then I want to watch a Youtube video but can't hear anything, or I join a meeting on another platform and no one can hear me - usually killing and restarting coreaudio does the trick (although I shouldn't need to do this), but this most recent issue, even doing this multiple times, the audio was not reset properly and I ended up removing Zoom and rebooting.

I haven�t seen that. Are you using a headset for Zoom and the speakers for the other audio? If so maybe it doesn�t hand back the audio stream to the speakers.

Apparently Zoom doesn't like Mac users... 😒 More vulnerabilities discovered in the Mac version...

https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/04/01/s...lnerabilities/

The same headset for both

Weird. I only use the headset for Zoom but haven�t noticed any trouble on a MacBook Air. My headset is a Sennheiser BT headset with a USB dongle.

Zoom's completely and hopelessly overwhelmed. I have 5 calls into their sales staff, 2 tech support tickets...14+ days and no response.

We've been playing with Jitsi.org. Doesn't have the security issues that Zoom has. For that matter, it doesn't have any issues for us at all -- it's entirely browser-based. NO software to download! They also allow phone dial-ins as well. Perhaps not quite as polished as Zoom, BUT it's open-source, free, and you can even host your own server in your own data center if you're worried about privacy (which is what we're doing).

join.me is also a low cost video conferencing solution that works well. $10/month for the base plan.

Also GotoMeeting is good (more polished and more features than join.me but more expensive).

If you have Office365 you probably also have MS Teams, which is great.

I've been working from home for close to a month now (about a week or so before my employer made it mandatory). A few comments:

Internet: I'm finding that the pitiful upload speeds Spectrum provides--even while on the ~940mbps/Gig plan--are a hindrance on occasion. (I'm a software developer that has to do a fair bit of uploading to work's servers.) If AT&T ever starts offering Fiber here, I'm definitely going to take them up on it. Even a 5G connection from them that does better than ~40mbps upload speed would be preferable. Fortunately, other than YouTube and Netflix taking a few seconds longer to start playing video, general internet use seems fine.

Home network: Fortunately, my personal setup was already pretty good prior to all of this happening (Ubiquiti ER-Lite router + UAC-HD access point + Netgear/Mikrotik 10GbE switches). My desk is near the router, so I use Ethernet for my work laptop even if it's not strictly necessary to.

VPN: My work uses GlobalProtect with mandatory 2FA to log in, so no worries about security. USB write access is also disabled by IT policy, though reads are still okay. VPN speed tests could be a bit better--I just got something like 180mbps down and ~30 up using speedtest.net now. (Without VPN, I can get ~750mbps down on Wi-Fi using my MacBook Pro--and Spectrum's advertised speeds over Ethernet.)

Conferencing: My team has a daily Microsoft Teams meeting (formerly Skype for Business). It seems to work okay for conferences, but how chat works in Teams takes some getting used to compared to Skype. An organization I'm part of outside of work is using Zoom for meetings now and it seems to be working well too.

Also, for our work meetings, we never use our webcams, so no worries there. However, there's definitely a difference in audio quality depending on what team members are using. Occasionally hardware and/or software issues cause garbled audio, too. I use a Jabra headset that the IT department gave me when I went in to get Skype reinstalled and I've gotten no complaints.

Work/Life Balance: Not that we're particularly doing much of anything while there's a shelter in place order going on, but working from home does make it easier to work and be expected to work outside of "normal" business hours. I'm not sure this is a good thing long term if this causes organizations to reconsider on-site employment. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind my eight hours being done predominantly in the evening as long as I'm only expected to do 40 hours a week or so.

Anyway, hopefully everyone's staying healthy. May we return to something approaching normal as quickly as possible (though I'm surprised that it's already been a month).

A month ago, Zoom didn't have the security issues that Zoom has, either.

Or rather, of course, it did - they just weren't known/public. I'm certainly not going to say I put a particularly high level of trust in Zoom - they have shown from previous actions that in many places security certainly wasn't one of their main design concerns - but I don't believe it's fundamentally insecure, in the same way that I don't think anyone could say that Jitsi doesn't have it's own (unknown) security issues. Yes, the fact it's open source helps, but that's not a panacea for "no bugs".

eg, zoom has been hit with people "zoom-bombing" meetings by guessing/brute-forcing meeting numbers. Jitsi don't use meeting numbers - it allows you to enter a meeting name. Do you trust your staff (all of them, not just some of them!) to not start a meeting called "SalesMeeting", which is infinitely more guessable than meeting number 2895422281?

Which perhaps works as long as your meetings are 100% internal, and your staff all use VPN, and your IT staff as on top of things to update the software when bugs are found. Maybe for you that's true. For most people, it won't be. Of course, you can still use it if it's not 100% internal/VPN, but now you're just running another service open to the internet, and that negates some (but not all) of the benefits of running it yourself...

Zoom fixed the UNC path bug within a few days of it being found. The fact it existed is bad, but the value of a cloud service is that it's now fixed for everyone (OK, so in this case it's a client bug, so you're still relying on users to actually update the client - but at least the cloud service is pushing out the new client)

The Zoom war-dialing is possible, in part, to a limited number space for the meeting ids. This is a design flaw that they should have fixed long ago.

And, although the pick-your-own-name method opens the door for problems, I think Jitsi deserves some credit for suggesting "Correct Horse Battery Staple"-style names as suggested defaults.

They did fix it year ago, with passwords and/or waiting rooms. The issue is that people choose not to use them in the interest of convenience.

I sort of wish someone would break into one of our zoom meetings and turn someone into a sweet potato or something to liven them up.

I still don't trust Zoom at this point. They've found themselves unexpectedly in the spotlight, and it's amazing what light can reveal. And this is what we know so far. It seems like every day new vulnerabilities and shenanigans come out: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archiv..._and_pr_1.html

Zoom still hasn't fixed known security issues that have been out for more than a year:
For now, we're still running Jitsi internally AND externally, and for the super-sensitive stuff it's Signal.

I think that issue was fixed late last week with the last remover and installer.