Corona virus

jstubbs · 2020-03-31 13:25:00

Here in Manila we’ve been in lockdown now for a couple of weeks on Luzon island which was the only option really, given that they had only 2,000 test kits and a poor public health system (but very good Doctors and Nurses with many exported to other nations like the UK).

There is a curfew from 8pm-5am, and each household is allowed only one person whom may go out to buy groceries. Only supermarkets and pharmacies are open.

Kind of surprising how Europe and the US have been slow to shutdown which is essentially the only way to slow down transmissions and save the local health system. Here now, people are donating basic foods, masks and other medical things to the frontline staff who don’t seem to have the right equipment.

Good luck to everyone, stay safe and wash hands :)

colak · 2020-03-31 14:52:28

jakob wrote #322386:

You will probably have seen Daring Fireball’s recent post on zoom which collects together a number of reasons to be sceptical of zoom’s privacy efforts.

The issues have been highlighted earlier today by the intercept too.

milosevic · 2020-03-31 15:00:25

Greetings from Madrid, epicenter of the coronavirus in Spain.
As in Italy, many people die every day at Spain, but we feel calm at home. After 20 isolation days, no-one is/feels infected in my family (thanks God). We only left our department to buy food at the nearest supermarket, allwais equipped with gloves and mask. We feel like go to the street, but once you are, you only desire go back home. Streets empty of people, police patroling… makes you feel uncorfortable and guilty on been walking outside. Many friends and relatives are falling sick, but here only really sick people are tested, so nobody believes official statistics.

For those of you who are in countries no such hited by coronavirus as Spain, here is my only advice: wash your hands frecuently and keep security distance with other people NOW. Everything can change on two weeks.

Hope your goverments are reacting sooner than our. We where watching our neighbour Italy but our politicians didn’t planed seriosly here until it was so much late.

phiw13 · 2020-04-01 02:39:09

jakob wrote #322386:

You will probably have seen Daring Fireball’s recent post on zoom which collects together a number of reasons to be sceptical of zoom’s privacy efforts.

aaah grubber… he provides a number of pretty decent links references on the subject, but then he must be the giant fan boy, as in “I‘ll trust the App Store version of Zoom”. The iOS Zoom app was using Facebook APIs for “analytics” (for months or years?). Apple let that be. Zoom itself voluntarily removed it when caught (and apparently nobody has checked yet what they use now).

bici · 2020-04-01 02:40:19

phiw13 wrote #322404:

aaah grubber… he provides a number of pretty decent links references on the subject, but then he must be the giant fan boy, as in “I‘ll trust the App Store version of Zoom”. The iOS Zoom app was using Facebook APIs for “analytics” (for months or years?). Apple let that be. Zoom itself voluntarily removed it when caught (and apparently nobody has checked yet what they use now).

in brief: Zoom is DOOM

phiw13 · 2020-04-01 02:49:39

colak wrote #322383:

I agree, but what are our options?

Sadly, not much :-(.

I don’t have a particularly good solution to this conundrum. People want to chat and talk in groups in all circumstances, and there is a need for decent, easy-to-use conferencing software in an increasingly internationalised world. It is in any circumstances better to call each other that shipping people across the globe in highly polluting transport means. And clearly, making decent (looking) and easy-to-use software costs time and money. And in the case of audio/video “chat & conferencing” it requires also server side infrastructure which needs to be set-up, secured, managed etc. And lots of money need to come upfront thus the need for investors and what not. Where our communities have failed is to develop mechanism(s) to make all that viable. The only way that we as communities/society have managed to build is generate (lots of…) money by monetarising the user is a disaster, made worse by a systemic impossibility to keep a close eye on those companies, and the use of our data.

Much more regulations and laws are badly needed here, not only one national level, but on an international level. I once noted elsewhere “we need to put Facebo*k under control of the UN Security Council, complete with Chapter 7…”

By all means use that software if you need to / feel like (I have done so in the past, can’t say I like the software at all, but then I am not particularly into chat and video communication), but know and let everybody know what you get into. (and for Zoom in particular, it is not good. see for instance in the Grubber link above, the references to the Mac installer, particularly a twitter thread by Cable Sasser).

and sorry but many of the “libre” projects that float around are poor or fail, especially the decent (looking) and easy to use parts.

Last edited by phiw13 (2020-04-01 02:50:27)

jakob · 2020-04-01 06:40:24

FWIW: I tried out Microsoft Teams and Zoom with a friend who needs a 20-person group call with non-tech-savvy participants later in the week. Microsoft Teams is very involved to make an ad hoc call, requiring admin setup and that each participant sign up to teams. I‘m sure it’s great for team groups working together.

Zoom was much easier by a long way. If the meeting initiator sets a (hard-to-find) setting allowing a ‚browser link‘ to be shown, users can participate from the browser without installing Zoom. I had no luck with Safari or Firefox with my (admittedly quite old) iMac (it said ‘computer audio not found’) but Chrome worked fine. I guess that limits Zoom‘s reach in your system at least somewhat. And if the meeting is password-less, you can also just share the url. There was a 40 minute limit but we weren‘t cut off immediately. For the next call Zoom ‚granted a time extension‘. It’s still a job all the same to manage many people at once in a meeting.

Bloke · 2020-04-01 07:24:03

Teams is pretty ropey. I used it extensively and often had stuttering or audio issues where people either dropped a couple of octaves and w-e-n-t s-l-o-o-o-o-w, or the sound constantly clicked, giving an odd vibrato effect to everyone’s voices. And that’s if it connected at all.

Not tried Zoom. Wife did yesterday for a uni call with 35 participants on her course. It had a “raise your hand to speak” button which signalled to others. That mitigated the everyone talk at once thing. She said it worked well.

I’m intrigued about Jitsi Meet. Looks like you can run an instance on their servers, presumably as a trial. And open source fits my worldview. Not sure how much server juice a convo requires per participant. Monetizing that/paying for infrastructure while offering an ethical alternative to Zoom without advertising would be an intriguing project in itself.

phiw13 · 2020-04-01 07:42:06

jakob wrote #322410:

FWIW: I tried out Microsoft Teams and Zoom with a friend who needs a 20-person group […]

I am told that Teams is a breeze to set up and use for group video talks – but that comes from people in small companies where the whole MS office 365 package is already widely used for everything including sliced bread as beverage of choice. Ok maybe not that…

Bloke wrote #322414:

Not tried Zoom. Wife did yesterday for a uni call with 35 participants on her course. It had a “raise your hand to speak” button which signalled to others. That mitigated the everyone talk at once thing. She said it worked well.

My only experience is as a participant in a small group, a few months ago when the world was still kinda calm. setting up and managing the “conference” or “talk” is fairly easy, I am told. Some teachers at a Tokyo uni told the experience was quite a mixed bag( in a teaching a class context).

bici · 2020-04-01 16:35:47

Bloke wrote #322414:

I’m intrigued about Jitsi Meet. Looks like you can run an instance on their servers, presumably as a trial. And open source fits my worldview. Not sure how much server juice a convo requires per participant. Monetizing that/paying for infrastructure while offering an ethical alternative to Zoom without advertising would be an intriguing project in itself.

Agreed. As someone who needs to set up a video conference in April i would like to recommend Jitsi Meet, but would like to hear if its a good possibility ….

gaekwad · 2020-04-01 16:53:59

jakob wrote #322386:

Pete had championed that too in the past. Sounds like one that might be worth a try…

He’s working on it. It’s…tricky. To be continued.

Edit: actually, I can tell you I was working on it earlier, I’ve ironed out some snags, but we had our first coronavirus-related death in my village today, so the day has been a bit derailed. Jim, a friend and client (in that order), was self-isolating with symptoms. I can’t say much more right now, but his death was not from coronavirus and not suspicious.

Please check in on your friends, more so if they have brain wiring that makes them more susceptible to the challenges of life. Thank you.

Last edited by gaekwad (2020-04-01 16:58:46)

michaelkpate · 2020-04-01 18:48:22

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a statewide order Wednesday mandating all residents to stay at home during the coronavirus outbreak. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issues stay-at-home order amid coronavirus outbreak

The order goes into effect tomorrow night at Midnight EST. It looks like I will be home for a while.

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#133 2020-03-31 13:25:00

Re: Corona virus

#134 2020-03-31 14:52:28

Re: Corona virus

jakob wrote #322386:

#135 2020-03-31 15:00:25

Re: Corona virus

#136 2020-04-01 02:39:09

Re: Corona virus

jakob wrote #322386:

#137 2020-04-01 02:40:19

Re: Corona virus

phiw13 wrote #322404:

#138 2020-04-01 02:49:39

Re: Corona virus

colak wrote #322383:

#139 2020-04-01 06:40:24

Re: Corona virus

#140 2020-04-01 07:24:03

Re: Corona virus

#141 2020-04-01 07:42:06

Re: Corona virus

jakob wrote #322410:

Bloke wrote #322414:

#142 2020-04-01 16:35:47

Re: Corona virus

Bloke wrote #322414:

#143 2020-04-01 16:53:59

Re: Corona virus

jakob wrote #322386:

#144 2020-04-01 18:48:22

Re: Corona virus

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