Important update: when you start a zoom meeting, by default it uses the most recent background.
I found this out at lab meeting today. https://t.co/TYJFVIc8Ui
— Michael Baym (@baym) March 12, 2020
Just recorded my first short lecture on zoom and I totally killed it. Got through the whole thing without a hitch.
Did I hit record first?
Not so much.
— Sam Kamin (@ProfSamKamin) March 13, 2020
Academic friends:
Isaac Newton discovered calculus while in quarantine.
William Shakespeare wrote "King Lear" while in quarantine.
You will learn how to unmute your computer's microphone during a Zoom meeting while in quarantine.
— Derek T. Muller (@derektmuller) March 14, 2020
My spouse pointed out, when I wondered whether Zoom could handle every university class in the country, that I could always switch to meeting my students within World of Warcraft, because the MMORPGs are definitely equipped to handle this kind of traffic.
— erika lietzan (@lietzan) March 11, 2020
I love this. Be sure to raid another professor’s class at the end of yours.
— Christopher Short (@Bluegrass_Esq) March 12, 2020
Major Major Major Major
Fortunately, as a member of the small East Coast component of a West Coast team, I’m very used to working remotely. I can’t imagine how disruptive this must be for everybody who isn’t.
Calouste
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m on a project team of 4. We’re in 3 different states and a different continent. I’m used to it. The whole company works that way.
HumboldtBlue
So Cole is a sage.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Half of my job requires access to a VPN that I’m on the lowest priority list for. ?♀️
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The most important issue in the election that almost nobody is talking about
Eljai
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: For my last birthday, my friend gave me a scarf which has images of RBG wearing a crown. Every time I look at it, I imagine her at the inauguration of our next Democratic President.
cs
In response to the tweet above about using WoW, I hope instructors around the country know about Discord. It’s a chat client primarily used for people in games. It’s robust. Already serves millions of users. Flexible. Integrated voice & video. You can stream whatever you’ve got up on your desktop.
You can create a channel, then create multiple chat rooms within that channel. Someone could create a channel for their class. Then have chat rooms for lecture discussion, q&a, virtual office visits, etc.
The best thing about it is that many of the kids already have it installed on their desktops and mobiles. They wouldn’t need to break in anything new.
Martin
Former Obama official:
JaySinWA
Okay are you and Watergirl gonna duke it out about whether this should be education or covid-19? Cause this looks like a turf war.
Martin
Says open thread. I’m just following instructions.
NotMax
@cs
The worst thing about it is that it is – ugh – Discord.
Intrusive (the tech folks can expound in more detail about process logging vis-à-vis spyware), insecure and sells data it collects on you and what’s on your device to third parties.
JaySinWA
@NotMax: Hasn’t Zoom recently had some of these issues as well?
piratedan
@JaySinWA: i’ve seen where a large number of meeting apps experienced issues towards the end of last week, i.e. zoom, gotomeeting, webex, skype… possibly because of the exponential amount of new traffic and increased volume of requests.
NotMax
@JaySinWA
Have next to no familiarity with Zoom but my immediate (caveat: and limited) understanding is they do not commodify collected data in the sense of packaging it as product for sale directly to third parties.
NotMax
@NotMax
Also (again, I could be mistaken but don’t believe so), unlike Discord, Zoom does not send out feelers into your device to collect and log data as to everything installed on it, what else is running on it or what else has been run on it.
Chetan Murthy
@piratedan:
I”m reminded that when Skype started they were peer-to-peer, and hence only used central servers for auth and location. But when MSFT bought them, they rapidly switched to fully-centralized, assuring everyone that it would be NO BIG DEAL. Ah, well.
Brachiator
@cs:
There is also Slack, Microsoft Teams and even Skype, which can be used to create channels.
A good number of robust choices.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Everything old is new again. Some 40 years ago was part of a group investigating and documenting uses and utility of Bell Labs’ electronic blackboard for long distance learning and for teleconferencing. Right before the entire electronic blackboard division and program was eighty-sixed.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Eljai: That would be the Notorious RGB image.
I forget why she was in the news on a particular week, but it was the first time a friend of mine had really paid attention to SCOTUS. He asked me about her. I said, “Oh, yes, huge fan. You should see her workout. We call her the Notorious RGB.” He was like, “Say whut?” So I pulled the image up on my phone and handed it to him. My hip-hop-fanatic friend fell off the recumbent bike.
When I quoted her reaction to the comparison to him, he fell in love with her, too.
Martin
@NotMax: They do not. My employer wouldn’t sign a contract with them if they did.
Martin
South Korean testing data suggests that the virus is primarily being spread by young, asymptomatic or nearly asymptomatic people. They aren’t getting tested in the US because they don’t feel sick, they go out to the bars or go to work, spread it, bring it to older individual who fall ill.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: do you have a link? for …. convincing the blithely indifferent.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: https://mobile.twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1239041092978343937?s=20
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: Thank you. Also, sob.
Immanentize
Thank you Mike in OLY! Encouraging that Spring is on its way.
My forsythia are blooming and my dogwood is budding. A month early. I certainly hope we do not get a long freeze again….
Immanentize
Where are the garden threaders? Like AL said — everyone can still garden, even if you are a Cactus Mom. Yes that is a thing.
So consider on this sunny (if chilly) day here near Boston getting out into your yard or field or ranch or on your porch and clean stuff up. Like Cole says, get outside and avoid others. And make beautiful things grow.
Betty
@Martin: I saw a German study that indicated people are extremely infectious early on and less so as they can sicker. Virus was spread in a work setting without sneezing, coughing, etc. Just sitting together in meetings. It was a small study, but wow.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Betty: Link?
WaterGirl
@Betty: I have read the opposite. I don’t have a link for that, unfortunately.