How some thieves broke into my car and why you're vulnerable too - <AUTHOR> http://www.articulateventures.com/articulate-blog/category/how-some-thieves-broke-into-my-car-and-why-youre-vulnerable-too <comment><USER2> My car was parked at the grocery store during an electrical storm. Lighting hit nearby and my "keyless entry system" unlocked the doors. After that my key fob no longer opened the doors. In the next few weeks I noticed more odd behavior: My dad's key fob opened my doors, my sister's key fob opened my doors, and a couple of random stranger's key fobs opened my doors. I've had the dealership reset my security system three times now at $40 a pop, and it still don't work right. Great technology! I long for the days before keyless entry technology, when you had to use a key to open the doors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Explain it?

Predictably, the car companies are stuck in the past. Much like GSM for your cell phone, keyless entry remotes are not secure and relied on security through obscurity.

The thieves simply have a small computer with an antenna that basically brute forces your keyless entry system.

It's like having 1000000 physical car keys in front of you and pushing the unlock button, key by key, until the door opens

<comment><USER4> So I don't know much about either these keyless ignition systems or security and encryption, but is it really that simple? According to my not-super- legitimate internet source ([http://auto.howstuffworks.com/remote- entry2.htm](http://auto.howstuffworks.com/remote-entry2.htm)), typical remote entry keys work with at least 40 bit codes, and different car manufactures use different systems/#s of bits. In additon, since the codes are encrypted with different random #s every time, you can't just enumerate every possible combination.

The concept of brute forcing, and doing it successfully for many different cars in a short period of time, just doesn't pass the smell test for me.

<comment><USER5> Not sure if it was the case here, but apparently some cars can unlock automatically if the key is nearby.

To hack this, you only need a sensitive receiver that can retransmit the signal from the key, and you need two people, on in proximity to the key, and another nearby the car when it unlocks.

<comment><USER6> That's not really the case. Some of them unlock via low frequency RF, but to my knowledge they still use encryption that uses their button click count as one of the variables plus a shared secret.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but the point of this scheme is that the car "believes" the key is in close range. If that is enough to get it to open the car, the thieves don't have to break any encryption, they just need to relay the RF signal. The faulty assumption on the part of the car manufacturers is that "RF signal present" equals "keyfob nearby".

<comment><USER6> No system I've been exposed to was defeated by a simple replay attack. You needed the shared secret and the click count (plus proprietary algorithm), which would be incorporated into the OTA message. Most LF systems are pretty low-bandwidth as well, and lock out quite quickly.

<comment><USER5> To clarify, I'm not talking about a replay attack. It's a _relay_ attack where they use the RF signal transmitted by the actualy car/key, just over a bigger distance than you would normally expect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am very far from alarmed. Though I can think of all of the 'scary' doom scenarios that go along with this, I figured out a long time ago that even my normal barely-running vehicles could be broken into or worse. Any doom beyond that has chances that are more rare than hurting myself while getting into the same car. So I'm not going to worry about it.

I'll continue to take reasonable precautions (don't keep valuables in the vehicle, have insurance, look into the car at night since I rarely lock it, etc). And yes, I rarely lock the car. I figure that a broken window (what I figure is the most common entry) will hurt me more financially and cause more inconvenience than anything in the car.

Technically speaking, if people can get my credit card numbers, it is unsurprising that the door lock technology can be manipulated. Locks never keep the determined out, it merely forces them to work more creatively.

</comment><comment><USER8> the idea that any car even _could be_ safe from thieves is laughable. all the crypto in the world isn't going to stop someone from smashing your window with a crowbar. hell, in SF it's safer to leave your windows open and doors unlocked with nothing inside.

don't leave valuables in your car, and buy insurance against theft.

<comment><USER5> The point of the car alarms and crypto is to notify you if your car is broken into, that will act as a deterrent.

That aside, many car thieves will even steel airbags (very expensive), and you can't exactly go around dismantling and removing them every time you leave the car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm gonna be that guy...

... maybe being able to unlock a car remotely is a bad idea.</comment>


Digital IDs Are More Dangerous Than You Think - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/digital-ids-are-more-dangerous-than-you-think <comment><AUTHOR> Release from the European Commission on the topic: [https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/cross- bor...](https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/cross-border- digital-identification-eu-countries-major-step-trusted-digital-single-market)</comment>


Paul Graham says there's no bubble. Ha - <AUTHOR> http://michaeldeshazer.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/paul-graham-says-theres-no-bubble-ha/ <comment><USER2> Gah, this is even worse than I expected.

> _Paul, I like you, but (big but): the mortgage bubble of the 2000s didn't > have anything to do with increasing productivity in a "new economy" or money > being moved from bonds to stocks, and that bad boy busted like an > adolescent's pimple._

Total non sequitur here. Bringing up the mortgage crisis is out of left field. Paul's statement regarded the comparison of today's tech startup market with that of the late 90s.

Is Mr. Shazer making a new comparison of today's tech startup market to the mortgage crisis? I'm not sure. There's no _there_ there.

> _Paul, JP Morgan just closed on a $1.2 billion fund for new tech startups. > And many other banks are following suit, because that's what banks do, just > like they wear them. Carlyle and other buyout firms are swallowing up VC > firms like a toothless prostitute. So, a little more than a few guys like > Yuri Milner and Zuckerberg._

Bandwagon != bubble. It could be that the tech startup market is still undervalued. Just noting that banks are investing in it does not make it a bubble.

Of course there is the question of bias. Mr. Graham clearly stands to benefit from higher startup valuations. Tell us something we don't know and with less hyperbole.

> _There is a bubble. And it's getting bigger._

An effectively bald though entirely anticipated assertion.

<comment><USER3> Just another case of someone with a catchy headline and no substance trying to get picked up by major news outlets to drive some trafic/$$$ to the site.

<comment><USER4> and I don't serve ads, and probably never will. But I do appreciate the traffic. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The one point I do agree with is that PG is probably the worst person to ask if there is a bubble in startup tech right now because he has more than almost anyone to gain from high valuations.

I understand Paul wants to be unbiased, but he cannot realistically do so. It's like asking the head of the Realtors board if home prices are stabilizing or asking Ben Bernanke if we're seeing an economic recovery. They will only ever give one answer because they have nothing to gain from giving any other response.

<comment><USER6> It actually doesn't follow that someone with domain knowledge is "the worst person to ask if there is a bubble." Furthermore, people who are successful tend to be coldly honest about reality, and that is how PG strikes me.

I feel confident if PG thought there was a bubble in start ups now, he would probably say just that, because being right "gains" something priceless, while being someone whose words mean nothing, loses everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok, what? 70% of that article are just quotes, and the other 30% is divided into two comments. One doesn't mention the .com bubble at all but brings up the mortgage bubble (why?), and the second just talks quantities. Both however, share awful similes.

<comment><USER8> The first comment is a little obscurely done. I think it's implication is just because you don't have people saying productivity is going up fabulously doesn't mean you don't have a bubble.

With second quote, I think I remember Alan Greenspan saying that the mortgage bubble wasn't one because it involve "a lot of local markets" so reasoning is "just because you have a very local phenomena doesn't mean you don't have a bubble". The other point is that when you investment banks falling over themselves to buy VC and when have Milner making a blanket investment in every Ycombinator, you again have blind investment.

I don't know if all of this is true, just raveling his cryptic comments.

As bubbles go, one thing that comforts me is both the dot-com and the mortgage bubble show that bubble need to reach a fair percentage of the whole economy in order to truly die. So if this is a bubble, we've got some time ;->

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think math helps here.

If YC funds 400 startups, they've spent somewhere around 8 million dollars. In the late 90s one .com startup probably spent that much on their office chairs.

Granted, there are subsequent rounds of funding, and maybe some less than prudent investments, but while we may be in an 'expansion' cycle of funding, it isn't fair to say that it's 1999 all over again.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Carlyle and other buyout firms are swallowing up VC firms like a toothless > prostitute.

stay classy

</comment><comment><USER11> I thought a bit bias was when a coin predictably landed on heads more than tails.</comment>


Winbuntu – Blurring the Lines Between Linux and Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackeradam17.com/2016/07/05/blurring-the-lines-between-linux-and-windows-with-winbuntu/ <comment><USER2> I feel like it's disingenuous to tack the "Linux" label on this when this particular Windows subsystem isn't using any Linux code (last I checked; maybe Windows is suddenly subject to the GPL and I just haven't noticed yet?). It's really the GNU userland - albeit compiled against Linux's API/ABI (IIRC) - running on Windows using a special compatibility layer, kind of like an inverse Wine (Water?). Since Linux itself isn't involved (again: unless Windows is now subject to the GPL), the more apt title here would be "Blurring the Lines Between GNU and Windows".

I tend to disagree with the hard-and-fast insistence on the use of "GNU/Linux" v. "Linux" (since not every "Linux" is a "GNU/Linux"), but this is one of the few cases where the "GNU" qualifier is undoubtedly warranted.

<comment><USER3> I find it perfectly logical to call it the "Windows Subsystem for Linux", considering it implements the Linux syscall interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry to be such a curmudgeon, but I'm very weary of the "awesome" thing and self-describing your project as such lessens the chance I'm going to look at it. Could I appeal to your finest nature and ask you to change the title? Seriously, just usinig "Blurring the Lines Between Linux and Windows with Winbuntu" would have been perfectly fine (and would comply with the "don't editorialise titles" rules [0]).

0: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. To be honest I was lost in terms of titling it and kept bouncing back and forth between different titles :)

<comment><USER4> Appreciated :)</comment></comment></comment>


High-skilled workers in small towns are a 'waste of resources,' says study - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90425948/high-skilled-workers-in-small-towns-are-a-waste-of-resources-says-controversial-princeton-study <comment><USER2> Setting aside the primary claim, I think there would be lots of secondary effects if this were taken to an extreme. Diversity is good in any system; in this case, exposure to people with different levels of income, different life priorities and personalities, different backgrounds, increases empathy and broaden's one's understanding of the world. This exposure is especially important in a large, democratic society. We've already started to see the loss of some of this cross-pollination in recent years, and the country's divides haven't been this deep in decades. Increased homogenization would be catastrophic, I think.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Cognitive non-repetitive," work as described is basically political work. I've heard it referred to lately as "durable skills." Soft skills are useful tools like others, but the elevation of them above competent work makes for soft ideas.

In the article, the examples of CNR work included "computer scientists," with lawyers, doctors, and managers - all jobs that computer scientists are rapidly augmenting, if not replacing with machine learning. So called CNR work isn't intrinsically valuable. It's artificially gated and the market for them is distorted because of regulatory capture. Tech is changing that.

However, I also think the availability of information on the internet has reduced the status of formerly elite schools to mere managerialist tribes. The schools offered networks and information, and those can't compete with social media. They're still politically influential, but the culture is leaving them behind and they're rapidly becoming just another faction. So, my bias is that the article is about some self-interested critical nonsense advocating a political agenda that won't have cultural traction. I look forward to arguing that point from my farm.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yet another study where humans are "resources" to be "efficiently" "exploited" by business. No thanks.

<comment><USER5> I agree with the sentiment: people are too often regard as mere tools. But I believe (hope) the paper was a theoretical exercise. In the same way one might discover human flesh is nutritious. And I image no society (expect maybe China) would view the paper as a how-to manual.

Rather than using this information to create a dystopian (and kinda click baity) future, it could be used to examine current social forces and make predictions and, ideally, prepare/compensate for them.

Indeed it would be just as easy spin the paper in a multitude of ways. For example, one might use it to justify taxation earmarked to aid the rural poor by saying it's not only ethical but also efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think the general thesis is so controversial or untrue. If your goal is singly maximizing for economic output, you're going to make silly trade- offs.

 _" In a summary of the paper, they emphasized that the research was an "academic exercise" and that they didn't address all the factors or potential repercussions of such a policy."_

<comment><USER7> Ehh, it's a very simplistic model (relative to the complexity of the domain). It might be somewhat true in a very narrow sense. Naively implemented, it would be sure to result in many unforseen consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quoting from the article that quotes the paper: "Furthermore, their productivity is tremendously enhanced by living with other CNR workers." Where "CNR" workers includes "computer programmers".

I really take issue with that. I think it is blatantly untrue. I've worked in small towns and I've worked in large metropolises (London, for example). I am _not_ more productive in a metropolis. It's handy to go to meetups occasionally, but I have to say that with the internet I learn more by watching interesting talks and emailing people occasionally than I ever did going to the pub and chatting with super famous people in person.

I mean, I _enjoy_ going to the pub and chatting with people in person and I really miss that about London, but I'm way more productive in my current rural setting.

It is, however, instructive to note that I am a remote worker. As a _business_ , if you want to have people who are local, then it helps tremendously to be able to select from a large pool. That's obvious. As an individual it's much easier to network in person and so it's easier to get a job. But, when you are actually _on_ the job? I really don't see this increase in "productivity" at all.

<comment><USER9> I took the article to mean that the _collective effect_ of CNR workers is enhanced when many are in the same location. The productivity of each person enhances the rest. That's not the same thing as being individually productive.

<comment><USER10> So it benefits lazy corporations and not smart corporations or astute talented individuals. Not really something beneficial to the greater society IMO.

<comment><USER11> If society relied merely on astute talented individuals, it wouldn't get very far. Most of the most astute talented individuals that have had an impact on society have had that impact as a result of all the less astute individuals in the organizations (corporations or otherwise) of which they were a part. The Manhattan project is exemplary of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm old enough to remember times when prestigiously-educated experts claimed big cities are going to disappear because of developing communications. Great to know they didn't stop generating their valuable prophecies since then!

</comment><comment><USER13> The paper in question: "Cognitive Hubs and Spatial Redistribution", by Esteban Rossi-Hansberg ( Princeton University), Pierre-Daniel Sarte (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond), Felipe Schwartzman (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond). September 3, 2019

[https://www.princeton.edu/~erossi/CHSR.pdf](https://www.princeton.edu/~erossi/CHSR.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> I hate when these articles cite "outrage" by linking a tweet with 6 likes. I wish journalists had an ethics board that banned outlets from trying to stir up controversy like this.

<comment><USER15> You should check out the paper. It is 83 pages (a bit longer than a tweet) and very dense with math. It tries super hard to reduce a social issue to a mathematical one with an optimum solution and is probably the best example I've seen of a disconnect between science and real life consequences.

<comment><USER16> Are you saying that economists should not study subjects that can have negative consequences for some?

The fact that productivity increases in big cities is not new finding. Economies of agglomeration is well studied subject. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration)

This study is modelling just one of the reasons why it is so little better.

<comment><USER15> This is the exact kind of thinking that got you Trump. Keep in mind that by the time 'some' amounts to a substantial part of the voting public that the disenfranchised can turn around and throw a spanner in the works. It would be socially much more productive to study how to re-balance society in such a way that the gains are not realized locally.

Think of it this way (very much simplified):

If cities A and B create are producing 10 units of value each and small towns C, D, E and F are producing 3 each and you relocate all the 'important' (again, simplifying) people to A and B so they produce 20 units of value each while the small towns drop to 1 each you've according to the paper optimized and reduced the waste. After all 43 > 29\. But from society's view this is a net loss. It would be much better to see how the small towns go from 3 to 5 each in order to reduce the gap.

Of course this is super simplified and in the end wealth distribution is a complex subject but this paper strikes out for me.

<comment><USER16> Inequality is separate issue.

Inequality is best addressed by free healthcare, education and direct money transfers, not by slowing down things that create wealth and increase efficiencies.

<comment><USER15> Nonsense. Inequality is best addressed by ensuring resources are spread equally so that _chance_ is distributed equally. If you don't do that then you're simply locking in and further accelerating any advantage already there. That's a positive feedback loop which will eventually lead to vast inequality that no amount of free healthcare, education and money are going to solve.

<comment><USER17> Paul Graham, who started this website, wrote: "Eliminating great variations in wealth would mean eliminating startups. And that doesn't seem a wise move." How would you respond to that?

<comment><USER15> I would respond that that quote is taken severely out of context if applied to such entities as cities and towns. Besides that I think PG has a bit of a vested interest there; you rarely see a rich person argue for more equality in wealth.

That said PG did more to lift up people to riches than the bulk of the paper penning econometrists.

So, start-ups are fine, but making it harder for people from smaller towns or rural areas to get proper medical care, legal representation, education and so on because of perceived economic benefits of letting them rot in favor of improving the lives of those in the cities is missing the wood for the trees and will do a large amount of harm.

<comment><USER17> nabla9 said: "Inequality is best addressed by free healthcare, education and direct money transfers". To which you replied "Nonsense" and demanded more drastic measures, otherwise healthcare and education won't help. But now you say healthcare and education are what matters. I'm confused.

<comment><USER15> It was nabla9 missing the point the article advocates for reallocating resources to where they have the most economic effect: the big agglomerations.

Providing free (but crappy) healthcare and education will not close the divide thus created.

So these things are not going to be solved without capable people in places that are behind already. You need _good_ healthcare and _good_ education at the same cost as in the big cities to make it make sense. If the price is free then so much the better but first and foremost this is a discussion about _quality_.

For example: in a certain third world country healthcare may be free. But all the good doctors have left for the United States because that's where they get paid the most. So now the locals have 'free healthcare' but it doesn't really help them. They probably would like access to _better_ and affordable healthcare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Don't read too much into it, economic models like this are wrong in the same way the original version of Einstein's theory of general relativity fails to model 90% of the stuff in the universe, except that in this case it's more like 99.9%. The original paper[1] describes a spacial equability models where selfish agent move to maximise some utility function. It's in the vein of Shelling's segregation model. It's the sort of idea that the non-cognitive repeat ad nauseam.

[1] [https://www.princeton.edu/~erossi/CHSR.pdf](https://www.princeton.edu/~erossi/CHSR.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> So, basically, "blue collar workers don't need no stinking doctors" (among other things).

I don't know what on Earth their criteria was, but this is not a study conclusion I can remotely agree to get behind.

</comment><comment><USER20> One of the most blood chilling things I've recently read.

<comment><USER21> I assume you mean because of the social engineering aspect of incentivizing "CNR workers" to move to big cities and discouraging other kinds of workers from being there.

If so, I agree. It's this idea of nationwide economic efficiency being the be- all and end-all goal of social policy, which completely ignores the actual "social" aspect of gutting small towns even more than already happens, not to mention instituting systems of effective apartheid that attempt to exclude people from important economic hubs.

Edit: ironically, Princeton itself is a pretty small town - 17,487 people in Princeton proper. Of course it's probably not what the study had in mind, and it's about 1.5 hours from NYC and an hour from Philadelphia, making it part of the Northeast megalopolis. Still, "small town" may not be the right term for what they're getting at.

<comment><USER15> It's not only institutionalizing the social divide between 'rural' and 'city', it is effectively deepening that divide.

<comment><USER22> Nothing can bridge that divide, because of the simple nature of economics in an industrialized country. Unless you are dealing with raw resource extraction, cities are _more productive_ , period.

The thing about living in an industrialized country is that raw resource extraction does not employ all that much labour.

It doesn't even matter how you structure your economic system. Even if we install radical socialism, with very heavy emphasis on wealth redistribution, there is still going to be a huge social divide between urban and rural.

We're better off not pretending that up is down, and black is white, and instead dealing with a world where we acknowledge that these differences exist, and will always exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> " _Long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country._ "

― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West

</comment><comment> em-bee what this study is missing is that a lot of non-CNR work is going to be automated away. there is a likely future in which CNR work is the only work left for humans to do.

if the conclusion of the study is even valid, then it only supports a trend that has been going on for a long time: we all move into cities, and living in the countryside may become a thing of the past.

this is not necessarily a good future as far as living conditions are concerned, but this is the current trend we are seeing everywhere.

silicon valley is a case in point. the reason why the startup ecosystem thrives there is because all resources needed are in one place.

what we really need to learn from this is how to enable this kind of collaboration without all needing to live and work in close proximity.

<comment><USER24> _that a lot of non-CNR work is going to be automated away. there is a likely future in which CNR work is the only work left for humans to do._

Hilariously untrue. There will still be plumbers and hairdressers long after the last lawyers and accountants have been AI'd away. I bet there will still be nurses long after doctors have gone the same way.

The reason of course is Moravec's Paradox.

<comment> em-bee yes, but plumbers and hairdressers are needed everywhere. it's not good to send them away from the cities. those jobs that can be sent away will be those that can also be automated away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Disallowing work from small towns where a high skilled worker resides is a waste of resources.

Refusing to pay based on employee value of a highly skilled worker in a remote location is a waste of opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER26> While the thesis may be true, I also believe that society's intellectuals will generally come up with intellectual arguments for whatever society was going to do anyway.

</comment><comment><USER27> For maximal efficiency, why don't they just decide what we should do professionally and then move us into the most convenient commune?

</comment><comment><USER28> This article immediately lead to the mental image of Patrick Star from SpongeBob saying "We'll take the poors, and move them over there" .

</comment><comment><USER29> True in so much as the Jeff/Sanjay effect. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the- friendship...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship- that-made-google-huge)

The unicorn within the unicorn was this pair. Unless pair programming gets mainstreamed, and superpairs are allowed to stick together, this effect will never be realized to it's full potential.

</comment><comment><USER30> Good study on optimum efficiency.

I don't really see why people are conflating this with a recommendation or opinion on upwards mobility. Its just a study on cause and effect to see if a conclusion can meet a hypothesis without the noise of conjecture.

</comment><comment><USER31> They had me until they included "managers" in their list...

<comment><USER32> It's an odd list. They also include doctors, which besides being a very routine work, are needed in direct proportion to the local population. Doctors are already being subsidized to move out of larger cities into places where they are actually needed in direct contradiction to the economist's premise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's got to be some of the biggest nonsense I've ever read, and that from an institute with such a pedigree. Surprising. No, if you are short of workers of a certain skillset the idea is not to hover them up for the high density population centers to monopolize them, they have all the advantages anyway. The solutions are (1) ensure more of these people are educated and (2) that the pay disparity between the high density centers and the more remote location gets leveled to the point that money alone will not cause a brain drain.

The same is happening on an international level and the effect is terrible. It causes local shortages of just about all important experts including doctors, IT specialists and so on.</comment>


FOSDEM 2020 Schedule - <AUTHOR> https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/ <comment><USER2> n-gate is already on top of it ([http://n-gate.com/fosdem/2020/01/29/0/](http://n-gate.com/fosdem/2020/01/29/0/)). Can't stop laughing about the libreoffice bit.

<comment><USER3> Can't tell if the i see a actual captcha that doesn't load, a actually broken web page, a way to piss off people with NH referrer, a satire of cloud flare or any combination thereof.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I had no idea it was doing that. Looks like it's detecting the traffic from HN. In any case, the fosdem article is on the front page and is full of fun tidbits like anagrams.</comment></comment></comment>


Learn a new technology every week| 52 Technologies in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/shekhargulati/52-technologies-in-2016/blob/master/README.md <comment><AUTHOR> I have taken a personal challenge to learn a technology every week and build an application using it. So far I have written about Scala covering SBT, Finatra, Slick, performing sentiment analysis in Scala using Stanford CoreNLP. Let me know what you all think.</comment>


AWS Security: Introduction to EC2′s AMI and RDS Best Practices - <AUTHOR> http://blog.celingest.com/en/2013/04/16/aws-security-best-practices-ec2-rds/

<comment><USER2> Waitin the VPS one...

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice post dudes!</comment>


A theory of Zoom fatigue - <AUTHOR> https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/a-theory-of-zoom-fatigue <comment><USER3> I don't know about those theories. I suspect something else. Do you remember landlines, and how responsive they were? You would say things back and fourth and the conversation just worked, even on three-way and conference calls? There was very little noticeable lag!

Even in the early cellphone days, I'd often prefer using my landline. There was less lag. Cellphones felt like speakerphones where it tries to do that cancellation stuff and you feel like the conversation is split into pieces .. like a walkie-talkie where you don't control the "over" / button press.

Cellphones have gotten better, but they've never really hit the latency of landlines (or maybe they have and I didn't notice. I never actually talk to people on my phone any more). Video conferencing like that that but worse. It's really apparent if you're on a remote team and you're next to someone on the same call. You can hear that delay.

I like a lot of the fatigue comes from that delay. We can connect more people now, with video, over great distances, but it does come at a cost at moving from virtual dedicated circuits to package switches networks and transcoding on some central server.

<comment><USER4> Landlines were so fast and so "direct" in their latency (where distance correlates very directly with time, due to a lack of "hops") that local phone calls were faster than the speed of sound across a table, and for a bit after they came out--before people generally got used to seemingly random latency-- local calls felt "intimate", like as if you were talking to someone in bed with their head right next to you; I also have heard stories of negotiators who had gotten really tuned to analyzing people's wait times while thinking that long distance calls were confusing and threw them off their game. But no: cell phones haven't become as fast as landlines and likely never can due to fundamental contrast of compressed packetized routed audio vs. the speed of an analog signal propagating over a circuit-switched wired connection.

<comment><USER5> I have very clear memories of my first overseas long-distance calls in the 1980s, which were over a satellite link. The latency was so pronounced (about half a second) that carrying out a conversation took quite a bit of practice. You almost had to carry out a formal protocol of handing over control of the line, as if you were on a walkie-talkie.

I have equally clear memories of my first overseas calls carried by undersea fiber because the _lack_ of latency was so pronounced compared to what I had become accustomed to by then.

I still can barely tolerate carrying on a conversation on a cell phone though. The latency and compression artifacts are just horrible compared to a landline. VOIP has gotten pretty good though. I can't tell the difference between a good VOIP landline and a POTS line.

<comment><USER6> I'm in the military. I have found that the habit of saying "over", learned as crowded circuit management for open radio circuits, is quite useful in teleconferences and VTCs, and for similar reason. It makes it clear that you're handing over the circuit. "Out" means you're leaving the circuit.

<comment><USER7> I think that can work well, as long as people _also_ adopt the military/aviation habit of speaking crisply and not rambling on to hog the channel until they're _absolutely sure_ they've emptied themselves of every possible thought they could ever have on the matter. Like I just did with every word after "rambling on". ;)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, this. The experience with overseas calls I was referring to was talking to my then-girlfriend who was spending a year studying in France. Saying "over" all the time is not very romantic.

<comment><USER8> Her: I miss you so much, your touch, your smell. I can't wait to hold you in my arms and gaze into your eyes.

You: Copy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lots of normal things about human interaction are broken in Zoom meetings.

* You can't have a normal conversation with that much delay. Every time you talk you're probably interrupting someone, and that starts to wear on you.

* You can't have any side chats with your neighbors before and after the meeting, making everyone seem less like a person.

* You can't tell who's looking at you, so you always feel like you have to remain presentable and vigilant.

* There's no sense of space. You can't look over at person if whomever is talking just teleports to the center of the screen. Or if the layout is fixed, sound isn't coming from anywhere in particular, so you need to search around for who's talking. And everyone on screen is looking a random direction.

<comment><USER10> So why the fixation on a video call? I'm probably just an old curmudgeon, but to me the benefits do not out weigh the oddities being discussed. Everyone wearing their pieces of flair with their "personalized" backgrounds are tiresome.

I can see the benefits of a screen share/presentation, but I really don't need to see the other people involved. I don't care about tone of voice. I get sarcasm. For the people that don't, then even if they can see them, the sarcasm isn't more/less because it's a video call.

Video calls to me are just another version of "Hey look at me!!!! I'm special"

<comment><USER11> In part due to the latency noted elsewhere in the comments, I find myself interrupting people more when I'm remote. With video on, the visual cue of someone getting ready to start talking makes that easier to avoid.

Secondarily, I have a much better time assessing whether other attendees are following a conversation. If I'm feeling lost, but everyone else looks like they're following along, maybe it's just me — and I'll sit tight and try to catch up. If others look bewildered, I'll start asking questions.

<comment><USER12> Maybe someone needs to add a feature to their video calling solution where you can press a button to "raise your hand".

<comment><USER13> Maybe this is sarcasm, buy Zoom has that exact feature.

<comment><USER14> I used that feature to "raise my hand" in my first ever Zoom meeting. The host didn't realize it until I raised my actual hand on video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any other Autism Spectrum or ADHD people who feel less fatigued by video meetings compared to IRL?

The things I like: \- having the range of activity during a meeting constrained to one area in front of me so I don't have to look around the room to make sure I'm not missing something / get overstimulated by too much stuff happening. \- Boxes with borders lighting up when someone is making noise / talking so I know where to look. \- Names always associated with faces \- text chat area for sharing links and non-disruptive ways to request clarification \- No longer get lost in the hallway trying to find rooms with weird names \- Don't have to kick people out of rooms when they stay too long \- can foot tap and fidget hands off screen without people noticing

<comment><USER16> My problem is I can't multitask during a zoom at all. I'm so anxious that someone will ask me a question so I'm tuned in the entire time while everyone else is pretty obviously off working on the side. I also find that I stare at myself fidgeting. It's nowhere near as bad as in person where I just want to not talk at all, though.

Also if everyone is on different timezones please don't make us turn on webcams. I'm getting a lot of 7-8am meetings lately now that my team is mostly East of me. I'm just waking up. I was in meetings from 8am this morning. I showered at 2pm when I finally got a 30 minute break.

<comment><USER17> I'm a little bit vain, a bit of a narcissist and self-conscious. I find it very distracting on Zoom to be looking at my own face on video to ensure I look like I'm properly paying attention, showing my best angle (hiding a double chin!) and not fidgeting.

Maybe I'm just too much in my own head about it, but it seems there's a bit of a performative element to zoom meetings making me a lot more award of presentation and perception than in irl meetings.

<comment><USER15> That makes total sense, most people don't make a habit of looking at themselves unless it's for the purposes of evaluating or adjusting something about their presentation. I tend to just make sure it's setup right when it starts, then use the option to hide the self-view to avoid that distraction. I don't care if I might look silly later, since constantly readjusting is a silliness of it's own. And someone will ping me if the camera messes up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised this didn't mention the elephant in the room: the audio quality is terrible. I simply can't hear half of what is said, even at full volume in a quiet room.

Either I ask for repetition all the time (and walk over whatever the next person said), or I assume it from context and let it go.

Even when I can pick up all the sounds, it's so different from hearing voice in person that I have to concentrate just to parse the audio into meaning. It's exhausting.

Cell phone calls are still pretty bad, too. Low bandwidth digital audio compression is just wretched.

<comment><USER19> The only thing really terrible is their (lack of) echo cancellation. Otherwise I'm about 90% sure it's just off the shelf OPUS with next to no DSP on top. It's not that bad on its own.

What is terrible is audio hardware on laptops. MacBooks are alright, but just $50 on a headset will go a long ways to solving your problems. Consumers haven't given a shit about audio fidelity for decades honestly, it's just showing today when you are listening to unprocessed audio streams that haven't been optimized for your laptop or phone's fundamentally inferior transducers.

This is a solved problem, for what it's worth. The major audio manufacturers sell products for these use cases. It's not the software at this point, it's actually decent. It's the input and output devices. Thank god for gamers buying these things and driving economies of scale.

<comment><USER18> So the solution is "convince all of my (unemployed) friends to spend $50 on something which has more value to me than to them"?

Assuming that does solve it, I'd say a solution is _known_ , but I wouldn't call it "solved". That's like a "nobody needs DropBox" type of "solved problem".

<comment><USER19> Well they have value in hearing others and being heard, I'd assume. All my friends have their own mics because we couldn't understand eachother otherwise, and we don't have problems with fidelity. My coworkers are a different story, because consumers rarely listen to integrated microphones before they purchase a device (bluetooth earbuds are absolutely terrible about this, fwiw). Who's at fault, the company for cheaping out, or the consumer for not caring enough to find out if they company cheaped out?

The technical problem is solved. The economics problem of getting people to value the solution and marketing problem of educating about it is still open.

Regardless, this isn't a problem to be solved by software. It's a consumer electronics problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Long time lurker, first time commenter.

The original post and the comments here are interesting and intriguing, but many points raised here (a) assume that the initial proposition is in fact true, and (b) don't ask as to what evidence is available in support of the proposition (or indeed whether there is evidence that might appear to contradict it) beyond our own individual experience:

'Why is video-conferencing so exhausting?'

This is not to say that Zoom (etc.) _isn 't_ tiring to use, simply that it's sensible first to ask questions such as:

\- is it particularly tiring to use? How do we know? \- if Zoom etc. is particularly tiring, for what proportion of users is this the case? \- are some types of users more affected than others? Why? \- is fatigue related specifically to video (as opposed to audio) use? \- is fatigue related to the number of concurrent users in a given call? \- is all video-conferencing similarly tiring, or are some platforms more so than others, and if so, why? UI? Latency? Some other reason? \- are Zoom meetings any more tiring than traditional face-to-face meetings? \- etc.

<comment><USER21> I think these are great points. I came to here to understand what people's feelings were on the matter. I don't particularly find 'Zoom' tiring any more so than a regular meeting. Is the problem these days just more meetings than there used to be? Because people are still trying to figure out the whole remote work thing?

And in fact I kinda like them better than regular meetings, because I can walk around the house and do whatever. But I also don't have a webcam requirement either, so maybe that's the difference for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just a little anecdote that's relevant here. Around 10 years ago my girlfriend didn't have wifi home yet (low tech family), so we spoke at night over landline, as those calls were free. And it definitely did feel like what some people here are saying: you could hear everything with no delay or cuts at all, the whole call just felt like she was there next to me.

They eventually setup wifi in their home, so we switched to VoIp calls, mainly so we wouldn't block our families' landlines for a couple hours every day. And the quality was so much worse...

The delay sometimes would be so bad that we had this technique where one would slowly count down from 3 and then say "Now"! Then when the other heard Now they'd say Now too, and the first person could essentially count the seconds. This way we could "slow down" our conversation to accomodate for the multi- second delay, which (thinking back) was like our own protocol for dealing with signal delay!

<comment><USER23> I will go out on a limb and say that the issues you describe had more to do with your internet connection(s) than with VoiP.

In the mid-2000s, I used Vonage (VoiP) from Japan to the US all the time. People were shocked because it sounded like I was right next to them. My grandmother actually thought I was bamboozling her by saying I was in Japan because she thought that there was no way it could be so clear.

Granted, I was usually dialing my VoiP on a blistering fast internet connection (not in Tokyo, to be fair) to a POTS line in the US, but the connection was amazing.

So I wonder how 10 years ago the VoiP-VoiP connection was so poor. Do you think it was basic internet speed (which the US has historically been behind other developed countries), or do you think it was something else?

<comment><USER22> Could very well be, she had a very basic plan (around 10Mbps), while I had a fiber plan on 200Mbps so maybe that was the issue. I can't recall how it was with other people though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was on a partially-remote team for years, with bi-weekly team conference calls - webcam was possible but we all never used it, not even the manager. Screenshare was used for presentations. But audio was enough. Why is everyone defaulting to video calls for things? It adds so much "noise" and cognitive load on things.

<comment><USER25> Some people miss seeing their colleagues' faces. I know I do.

<comment><USER26> You miss them. Not their faces.

<comment><USER27> My personal happiness plummeted, anecdotally, when my coworkers started dropping the video feed one by one. It was surprising, but noticeable and significant.

<comment><USER25> Same for me. There's just little things about interacting with a person face to face, personality aspects like how they express themselves: posture, eye movement, facial expression even. They just add to the interestingness of the work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> First time I've heard of this and it's not something I experience at all. I do not find video conferences more exhausting than in-person meetings - <USER2> anything maybe even the opposite.

One factor than can make it more tiring is poor connectivity and audio to the point where it becomes an effort to interpret what others are saying/making oneself understood. Other than that I think it's just a matter of what one is accustomed to.

<comment><USER29> I also find meetings via Zoom less draining, in general, than in-person meetings.

Maybe this is why:

> _This, too, amounts to a persistent expenditure of social and cognitive > labor as I inadvertently mind my image as well as the images of the other > participants._

If I understand the author correctly, if they don't have a constant image of themselves presented to them, they aren't constantly processing how they look to others(!)? Well, in that case, I can see why Zoom would be more draining, but, you know, welcome to my world in any situation except when I'm alone or only with my SO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I find _leaving_ a call to be difficult. In the real world, someone just "dropping in" to a meeting room can nod, wave, or gesture to say hi, find the right moment to enter the conversation, make a point and then leave with the same nod, wave or gesture. You can't do that on a video call without either seeming rude ("Foo has left the call") or breaking the main conversation flow ("Hey everyone, I'm gonna leave now"). It's tiresome and I end up sitting on calls until everyone else is ready to exit.

<comment><USER31> I usually leave message in the chat like "sorry, gotta go" and wave into the camera when exiting.

Don't have the impression that this is disrupting the conversation too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Kevin, you're muted. Unmute and say that again, please"

"Sara, your voice cut out for 30 seconds and we didn't hear any of that, can you please repeat?"

Two people talking: "Bfrhtxhlcyfoydoyd... oh, you go ahead" "no, you go ahead" "OK like I was saying, cofhlflydhlbdfykdjtxtc..."

"Hang on, I think Kumar just disconnected. We need him to continue." "Can someone text Kumar and see if he can rejoin?"

"I can't see more than five huge pixels of your presentation, Jan. Can you re- enable screen sharing?"

Things that are exhausting and don't happen during face to face meetings...

<comment><USER33> Or that one person who refuses to mute while typing loudly and sniffling and slurping their coffee and making wet sloppy mouth noises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the problem is that Zoom hasn't solved any of the hard problems with scheduling and holding meetings remotely. They got decent/reliable multimedia multicast, and I'll give them that.

Talk to anyone in process management/optimization and they'll probably rant to you about how bad most people are at holding and attending meetings. The "one page memo" at Amazon is kind of famous.

Zoom (and all its competitors) could do a lot to solve these problems and doesn't. That's the source of Zoom fatigue. People are bad at meetings, don't know they're bad at them, and hold bad meetings. It's stressful and tiring. Maybe Zoom just makes it more obvious when you can't easily joke around or grab a coffee. To me it seems that all these remote meeting software solutions are only focused on the purely technical problems, because they're really easy to specify and measure improvement. I haven't really seen anyone use technology to really go after the _social_ problems of video conferencing yet, at least not like how Discord and Slack have done in their domains.

</comment><comment><USER34> Seems obvious and succinct to me: on Zoom, you feel compelled to look at the screen all the time. In-person, you can respectfully look anywhere in the room because the other person shares the physical space and can intuit where your attention is.

<comment><USER35> I wonder if positioning the webcam say 2m away looking at the general workspace would work better - not just the head.

Need to have highish res video for faces still to be distinguishable though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Has anyone here used Mumble? They put a great deal of effort into lowering latency, and in my experience the results are quite good.

I wish it wasn't so fringe so I could get non-tech people to use it with me.

<comment><USER14> I just looked. It's not free. The website ambiance is also not very inviting.

<comment><USER36> Ah, I know what you saw! That's the wrong site—how did they get to the top of Google?

The correct one is: [https://www.mumble.info/](https://www.mumble.info/)

It's free, OSS, etc. It does require hosting a server, however.

<comment><USER14> They have the same name as a competing service???

It sounds like they made a mistake choosing that name/domain.

<comment><USER36> I _think_ Mumble.com hosts instances of Mumble.info's software (although they aren't related a la WordPress.com), so they aren't competing per se. Definitely an unfortunate situation, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'll take a 1 hour Zoom call over the 1:30h commute to meeting in traffic jams, 1 hour meeting, 1:30h back in traffic jams any day.

Any 'Zoom Fatigue' I'll shrug off with a nice walk and a coffee in 30 minutes. The stress from spending 3hrs bumper to bumper ruins more than just the entire day.

</comment><comment><USER38> Meetings are exhausting, Zoom or no Zoom. I've noticed no difference and I'm on at least 3/day.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think the main cause of stress and fatigue is that you have to be presentable all the time.

I put a sticker over my camera and I bought a headset with a hardware mute switch (so that it doesn't show) and now I can phase out just like I'd do in a regular meeting :)

<comment><USER40> I recommend a camera cover slider. This one works great.

It gives me some sense of physical security that hackers can't penetrate the camera, or corporate can't spy on me, since they're now installing desktop screen capture spyware on your laptops. They can probably spy on you by stealthily activating the microphone, but that's a different problem.

[https://www.amazon.com/0-027in-MacBook-Smartphone- Protecting...](https://www.amazon.com/0-027in-MacBook-Smartphone-Protecting- Security/dp/B077ZT29P2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> On a slightly related subject I can HIGHLY recommend Google duo for voice calls. Very little latency, fantastic clarity and the ability for both parties to talk and listen at the same time.

Makes it so much less tiring for long conversations.

I have not tried it for group conversations yet.

</comment><comment><USER42> For one-on-one videoconferencing meetings with normal latency (e.g. within 3-4 time zones), I find zero fatigue or problems like this.

The only "fatigue" I find is frustration when people are talking over each other or multiple people trying to jump in at the same time. This generally happens either when latency is bad (e.g. US-Japan), connections are bad generally (MS Office decides to auto-update in the background and saturate your download), or just when it's a particularly contentious meeting with lots of people trying to get a word in edgewise, and all the normal cues you use to figure out when to talk just aren't there. And the reasons for those all seem self-evident.

<comment><USER43> A meeting that has a component of "go around the room and get everyone's input" is harder in Zoom. In a physical room, you go clockwise or counterclockwise. But on Zoom, when someone finishes talking, who knows who's supposed to go next?

<comment><USER44> You need someone to serve as the facilitator for the meeting and call out the order.

<comment><USER45> And have ground rules established.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The elephant in the room is the lack of EYE CONTACT. As a mediator now having to work on video, this is very close to a deal breaker. We don't hear much about it on tech news because no one has a mass market solution. A google search will find either a wasteland of dead SW and HW products or room based systems that are so expensive that they are typically bought by globals for CxOs.

</comment><comment><USER7> The "uncanny valley" aspect is something I have experienced, but the big thing for me is the accumulation of three types of events.

(1) People trying to talk at the same time and taking several seconds to sort out who goes first.

(2) Glitches when everything freezes or even gets kicked out and brought back in, taking even longer to resolve.

(3) Wanting to say something and having to wait ages as people with less lag (I'm on the opposite side of the continent from everyone else) keep jumping in without a break.

Each instance of these raises my annoyance level. Dozens upon dozens of them even in a half-hour meeting can leave me totally exhausted from trying to tamp down the anger. By contrast, doing a 1:1 over VC isn't _nearly_ so bad. Maybe an occasional bad moment, but not enough for fatigue to set in. I highly recommend that everyone do that comparison for themselves. The problems tend to increase more than linearly with number of participants, until there are enough that everyone accepts the need for strong moderation and two out of the three issues drop back to near zero.

</comment><comment><USER47> Do not feel this. I have a wireless headset so I'll occasionally mute my mic and do a couple of dumb-bell curls or go get some water while thinking. Feels fine, honestly. I like being present for the social comfort I get from physical proximity to people but the Zoom thing just has that absent, so I don't get that extra bonus but I still don't feel tired.

<comment><USER48> You do curls on video?

<comment><USER49> I'm not the person you replied to, but I never turn on my video.

<comment><USER50> Do you ever feel pressured to turn it on when everyone else in the call has their video on? I know I do and it's something I need to work on cause I find myself more productive and engage with the camera off for myself.

<comment><USER33> Turn the camera off after introductions, then only turn it back on when you want to make an important point or the convo is about a very specific work item related to you.

If someone complains, you can say you don't want to clutter up the video feed or that you're having latency issues (also, they're a dick).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> As a full time remote worker, one of my favorite things about my setup is that I have a 43" 4k monitor set about 6 feet away from my eyes. I use macOS's scaling feature to make everything bigger. This has significantly reduced my eye strain and my overall fatigue.

My setup is somewhat unique, as far as I can tell. I have the monitor on a wheeled TV stand and I use a small hand cranked standing desk to support my laptop and keyboard. The laptop is connected to a dock that sits below the monitor with one Thunderbolt 3 cable, then I have one USB cable returning from the hub to the desk to support my microphone and keyboard.

This setup gives me a ton of flexibility in how I position myself relative to the light in the room and the distance between my eyes and the monitor while maintaining a standing position.

</comment><comment><USER52> I think it's exactly the same as 'Moral Fatigue'

Every meeting you have to think about audio, video, the background, how to chat, is mute really really on, what are you wearing, other people in the house, the fact your setup is being judged.

In an office you can just do it.

It's not until you have set yourself up and comfortable and confident you then notice all the little things missing that we know are important to humans, like touch and smell and body posture and 3D video and 3D sound which I think are not about fatigue but something else.

The Reason You're Exhausted Is 'Moral Fatigue' [https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture- features/corona...](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture- features/corona-exhausted-moral-fatigue-974311/)

</comment><comment><USER53> It is exactly the same as why we can't drive as well while on the phone.

When face to face with someone every possible audio frequencies emited by the other person will reach you. This means your brain won't have much work to do to make sense of this information since it is 'complete'.

In a zoom meeting in most cases everybody is on his laptop using the built in laptop microphone. This means the sound will be mediocre at best concidering there isn't any network issue. Voice quality will be compressed and lack certain frequencies that you don't notice but help you decypher more quickly the other person speech.

That means that the brain energy necessary to only be able to understand the person in a zoom meeting for the same amount of time is more important than in a real life meeting.

</comment><comment><USER54> Thinking a lot of Zoom meetings are just too long. I recommend max 30 minutes for a meeting, almost regardless what it is about. It's enough to come up with some action points that can be worked on in the meantime, then followed up with a new meeting e.g. in the afternoon.

</comment><comment><USER55> I have a simpler explanation, and my mantra for life.

      Are you finding something difficult?
      Is it something you've been doing frequently for a long time?
      If not, then of course it's difficult.
      Keep hope: We get good at the things we do in life.

</comment><comment><USER56> I recently discovered that the best way for me to communicate over Zoom when speaking is to not even look at the screen. I'll stare off into the distance and just focus on my words and thoughts.

Video and audio lag seems to short circuit the communication interrupt window that happens normally in person to person communication, although in large enough gatherings that fails even IRL.

Another thing is that the way Zoom gallery mode works is a bit unnatural in IRL. In normal P2P communication your only looking at one set of eyes balls at a time. All of the sudden you have several sets of eyeballs you can see all it once. This makes it more like public speaking and less like a small tribe meeting.

</comment><comment><USER57> Aren't meetings in general draining?

</comment><comment><USER58> Love how nobody checks what Zoom actually does in terms of audio.

First, the do a lot around synchronizing video and audio. On bad connections they slow and speed up video and audio to keep the appearance of coherence. Really, really hard stuff that other video conf systems fail at.

Also, they have audio settings to filter background noise. Basic settings around the mic, but the Advanced settings about noise cancellation ("Original Audio").

If you book online classes for music teachers, you'll see why they prefer Zoom and which settings they recommend.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think the money quote is this:

> perceiving an image of a body in virtual space rather than perceiving a body > itself in shared space may be worse than not perceiving a body at all.

So drop the video and go audio only.

Of course, I'm legally blind, so I can't really understand why perceiving facial expressions and body language is apparently so important. But one of my best friends is totally blind, and the two of us have communicated over two decades without ever being able to see each other, so it can work.

<comment><USER60> It's a familiarity thing. Sighted people are used to a manner of communication that includes visual cues, and people always prefer what they're used to. I also find that people who are used to visual in-person communication also dislike videoconferencing because they can't see things like when another person is crossing their legs or tapping their foot.

Whether any of that is actually beneficial is another question entirely. Personally, I have an easier time concentrating on the conversation when it is audio only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I find the video component to be completely superfluous and often distracting. The combination of audio, screen-sharing, and chat are more than adequate for accomplishing the task at hand. I don't need to watch grainy, stuttering video of my co-workers in sweat pants to be productive.

</comment><comment><USER62> To me, physical meetings are as draining as the ones using zoom. If it's a meeting,where you just sip coffee, listen to others who do all the taking,then it's easy, however beimg actively involved in a convo,while trying to come up with some useful stuff,can be draining.

</comment><comment><USER63> I imagine reading this article to a uranium mine worker in Namibia.

<comment><USER64> Over a video call? Please no...

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> > having to remain relatively still in front of a camera

If you video conference from your phone or laptop then you can move around.

</comment><comment><USER66> You are completing with the latest show on Netflix - that most people would rather be watching

</comment><comment><USER67> I think another issue is having to re-invent cues for changing who is talking in the conversation. When you're talking to someone in person, you can pick up a lot of information as to whether they want to continue talking, or whether it's your turn. On video conferences, those things are missing. You might detect a lull in the conversation and start talking, but at the same time, someone else does the same thing and starts talking. You have 100ms+ of latency, so you can get into what you're saying before realizing that someone else took their turn (or you took theirs). The collision mitigation algorithm takes place, and it's just as bad for your mental fatigue as it is for your WiFi's latency (which uses the same algorithm -- listen before talk, and if you collide, wait a random amount of time and repeat). These things just don't happen when a few people are in the same room together.

The result is that we try to use the video channel to pre-allocate timeslots for speaking. You make your eyes bigger, you raise a finger... but sometimes people aren't looking at the video, or don't understand what your newly- invented cue actually means. This is all very tiring.

The overall quality of the call is much lower than real life, as well. People do not own good microphones or cameras, so you can't actually hear them or see them very well. The noise gate intervenes and just cuts off audio from time to time. It is maddening how bad it all is.

Many years ago when I worked for Bank of America, we had these multiple-100k Cisco videoconferencing setups. They worked really well. My friends and I were at work pretty late and there was a tornado warning, so we couldn't go home (we all biked). We went to these conference rooms, set up a link between the two rooms right next to each other, and had a totally normal conference. (Things were set up so that the entire wall of the room was a video screen, and it had an array of cameras, microphones, and speakers. Everything was tuned perfectly so it looked like the people in the other room were just sitting across the table from you. There was no latency, everyone was their normal size, and the audio and video quality were perfect. Obviously with two rooms across the hall from each other, there shouldn't be any latency... but at least the system didn't add its own. It makes a big difference.)

Finally, I think another issue is that people just aren't used to getting work done with video conferences. I worked as a remote team at Google, so pretty much 100% of my meetings were video conferences. 1:1s with my manager and everything else. The system suffered from the same quality/latency issues as anything else (though we did typically have good cameras and microphone arrays in every room), but through practice, people got good at getting stuff done despite the limitations. I never really felt fatigued the way I do on calls with random people at home. (I guess my tips are: have an agenda in advance, and use your screen share to show progress through the agenda. Call on people in remote locations: "Anyone from the New York room have anything to add?".)</comment>