desilentio

It's not necessary for everyone to have a Google account?

You don't see the point of being suspicious of secret-source? and especially of an entity that is known to be dishonest? unless it is known to have been dishonest in the precise manner in question?

I think both video and audio were skippy to the point of uselessness. I've also used Jitsi with moderate success with a couple of interlocutors, where video disappeared now and then.

I'm not a company, I'm at a university, and the u. has decided to use Zoom, perhaps because it doesn't care about security, or because it thinks being concerned about Zoom is being paranoid.

Sorry, I didn't think in terms of degrees of untrustworthiness. What I miss is an open-source alternative. Doesn't Microsoft let the NSA tap into Skype calls?

As for Zoom, I don't understand why people trust them or still use their product if they are at all concerned about security. It makes very little sense.

I certainly don't trust them, but I do use Zoom (from a dedicated unprivileged user, so it can't do any harm beyond recording my conversations), because my colleagues use Zoom, and because there doesn't seem to be any working alternative. I got them to try Jitsi once, which simply didn't work.

PS. There may be working /secret-source/ alternatives, but I don't know why one should think Zoom /more/ untrustworthy than them.

The restored model M I've tried had unpleasantly stiff keys; my model F does not.

I don't want to be rude, but your use of `whom' is wrong; `whom' is only used for the object.

Have you ever had any success with this method; did you ever get anyone (sooner or later) to understand he had been deluded?

May I ask if you know why you use rules of that kind, with spaces only on the side opposite the insertion? I've seen that in print but only once.

Since everybody is now using Zoom and not Skype, I would expect the NSA to try to get the same access to Zoom conversations as they have to Skype conversations. And I don't have the impression that Zoom would say no to billions of dollars to protect its users' privacy.

Any direct evidence that Zoom is giving full access to the NSA now?

What is the probability that my (a nobody's) Windows backdoor will ever be used?

OK, but not for Windows, it seems.

I would like a desktop computer (i) with a case that isn't ugly, (ii) that's completely silent, and (iii) core- and librebootable. Any suggestions?

Doesn't seem to support 32-bit computers.

I would have thought they were never stored on disk (by Zoom anyway, maybe by the NSA and the Chinese). Wouldn't that require a huge amount of space?

Are you saying that Zoom is recording conversations?

Isn't the whole point of end-to-end encryption -- not to have to trust any third party -- undermined by secret source? If one does not trust Zoom not to snoop on content passing unencrypted through their servers, why should one trust them to provide true end-to-end encryption? And, if one does trust them to provide true end-to-end encryption, why might one not as well trust them not to snoop on unencrypted content?

That's a valid point. But isn't it a bit archaic to have the thing begged for as a direct object? Wouldn't it be more normal to say `beg for the question'?

Why don't you just say `raise the question'? Should a language be deprived of everything that is not obvious (to everyone)?

This claim on Wikipedia is false. The article referred to does not claim that `petitio principii' or `begging the question' is a ``mistranslation''. Nor are they. They are both perfectly correct and reasonable translations of `τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ αἰτιεῖσθαι' (from Aristotle), which means to beg (ask, αἰτιεῖσθαι) one's interlocutor to grant one the very point in question (the ``question''), which one set out (in the beginning, ἐν ἀρχῇ) to demonstrate. (Literally, it means: ``the (thing) in (the) beginning (to) beg''.)

It is important to understand that `question' does not here mean what it normally means (a query), but rather `the proposition in question'. Begging the question is asking one's interlocutor to accept as true the very proposition in question.