Hi Greg, Thanks, your two emails were extremely helpful! I especially liked the ACM resources, your experience with Jitsi meeting of 10-12+ people (which fits what ACM says), and the CCC talk. All of those I forwarded along to a few other people. Thanks again for the awesome information.
Doug On 2020-04-19 12:35, Greg Newby wrote: > Hi, Doug. Just last week, the ACM came out with a thorough and interesting > guide on how to run a virtual conference: > https://www.acm.org/virtual-conferences > > They link to an open Google Doc that lists lots of different resources and > their characteristics: > > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LLLniPkf48CCZyG_BNy1ylF2wXNlztqNEOnzNuMQmJc/edit > > There are also a number of other useful links and appendices. There is no > easy answer to the choice, since all the tools have limitations. They don't > dig much into security and privacy aspects, but do have focus on how to > restrict access only to registered persons. > > Another resource is something I posted to cpunks about earlier. I'm attaching > the email I sent. It was a CCC talk that described the different software > they used. Mastadon & Jitsi were highlighted, among others. > > Jitsi has a key limitation in how the video streams are sent, which makes > larger meetings a problem due to bandwidth management - I experienced this > myself, where a meeting with 10-12 people fell apart because attendees were > getting dropped, or couldn't receive all the participant streams. > > Another personal experience I have is with Slack. Slack is actually pretty > good for live audio/video meetings of 10 or so people. The nice thing is that > if you're already having an ongoing Slack chat, you can launch a "call" any > time in the same channel. > > It's nice to hear from you. Enjoy! > Greg > > On Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 06:24:23PM +0000, Douglas Lucas wrote: >> Hey cypherpunks, >> >> So what video chat options are there that are less privacy violating and >> social graphing than Zoom, Skype, etc, while still being at least >> somewhat available to the everyday user? Imagine two use cases: >> >> 1. Audiovideo chat between Alice and Bob: they want to watch an online >> movie together whether by sharing a screen or some other method, and >> then have sexy times later by same audiovideo chat. Imagine further that >> Bob uses Linux laptop and knows more or less what he's doing, while >> Alice uses Windows or Apple or her standard-issue smartphone or w/e and >> doesn't want to spend her little weekend time off paidwork trying to >> configure stuff to meet some faraway incel's expectation of flawless >> fantasy security. >> >> 2. A video panel or Q&A being hosted by your local friendly anarchist >> bookstore. Maybe it needs 3-5 people on a panel talking, their famous >> faces visible on the screen along with their audio while they debate >> each on internecine leftist conflicts that distract from far more >> rational propaganda of the deed, while the 20 people in the audience, >> including people of all sorts of demographics who have a hard enough >> time paying their bills online, have their audio and video forcibly off >> so there's not random beeps and bloops and toddler singing during the >> panel, but the audience could still type in Q&A questions or whatever. >> It would also be cool if there was a film screening option -- imagine an >> anarchist bookstore that prior to covid19 had been doing weekly film >> screenings offline in their brick and mortar location, but now wants to >> do something similar online, while making it hopefully accessible for >> people without intense computer skills. >> >> How are Signal and Wire for the above? >> >> My big picture understanding has for a long time been that, 1. perfect >> security is snake oil, the top spy agencies can crack anything if they >> want given enough time and targetting interest, but that's not typically >> relevant to the above use cases unless you're a Supreme Court justice or >> an incel fantasizing about being James Bond, 2. encryption makes data >> packet size much bigger, and large data size is already a problem with >> video in cleartext, so there never has been a really good solution to >> this problem. However #2 was my understanding as of like 5 years ago, so >> I'm curious if some new solution has come out. >> >> It looks like EFF is fairly useless and using Zoom themselves. I suppose >> if they're not gonna go after something meaningful, like how the >> corporate voting gear in the US is closed source, they have to spend >> that sweet Papa Omidyar cash and prestige somehow and produce little >> guides about how to toggle your Zoom settings. Afte >> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-about-online-tools-during-covid-19-crisis >> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/cc-backgrounds-video-calls-eff >> https://ssd.eff.org/ >> >> Guides by Riseup Networks don't have much on video understandably >> https://riseup.net/en/security/resources >> https://riseup.net/en/security >> >> Prism Break mentions something called Jami I've never heard of >> https://prism-break.org/en/all/ >> >> And yeah, Signal and Wire...? I know everything is fucked but using >> something less bad for the use cases outlined above seems better than >> diving headfirst into whatever the worst popular solutions are. >> >> Thanks! >> >> Doug
