Show HN: X11 tool to share a screen area in any video meeting

I find it very interesting how much our threat model has changed in the last 10-15 years. We no longer trust even local software, as we have to assume everything is now malicious. Commercial software from "reputable" companies can't be trusted to not pull a ton of analytics and personal data off your computer. We now have to worry about every piece of software being a keylogger and spying on other windows/applications and reporting back.

We've had to give up so much flexibility. Wayland certainly focuses on plugging this hole, but it means we've lost all these cool utilities like this one. There was just so much you could do with devilspie, xdotool, and others to make sure my operating system and window environment worked for me.

I still really miss X11's Zaphod mode, where you had two independent X sessions (:0.0 and :0.1) on two different monitors, with different window managers and different windowing rules.

I miss the days of being able to trust my computer and trust my software.

If you can't trust your locally installed software, everything is lost. I understand where this new threat model comes from for some people but I'd rather continue to avoid bad software sources than hamstring my OS in the hopes of avoiding malware I installed on purpose.

I agree. But can you trust Zoom? What about Office or Photoshop? Can you trust Websites or your browser anymore? Even open source apps have analytics in them that may not be trustworthy anymore (firefox, audacity, ...).

> If you can't trust your locally installed software, everything is lost.

That's only true if you decide to trust it.

You can deal perfectly well with software you distrust, and not have it harm your system.

This is why I don't run Zoom or Office or Photoshop or versions of Firefox or Audacity not distributed by Debian.

Browser sandboxes pretty heavily though of course one does want to be a bit careful there too.

Yes. By not running it.

I teach online for a living, and -- yep Zoom through FIREFOX only.

Coincidentally, it's also the best experience, for whatever reason it's the only on that supports virtual backgrounds on Linux for me? Neither Chrome nor Desktop seem to work for this.

> Commercial software from "reputable" companies can't be trusted to not pull a ton of analytics and personal data off your computer.

Thankfully, for a lot of software, there is no reason to ever give them network access in the first place.

Zoom through a browser only.

As for the rest, they may have "analytics" (spyware) but are there any documented cases of any of them acting as an X11 keyloggers or covertly screenshotting the users desktop? Those are the threats Wayland asks us to fear. And Wayland won't protect us from the rest. If Firefox or Audacity phone home with reports about what I'm doing with those applications, Wayland won't stand in the way.

What is interesting is that physical home security has gone in the opposite direction - people are happy to put dozens of devices in they home which can (and some definitely do) stream everything they hear and see to the cloud.