France gives Zoom and Teams the chop

Auto-generated description: A cartoon features Zoom and Teams characters avoiding a guillotine labeled Sortie, while standing on a Visio platform, with a French man gesturing towards them.

American tech giants just lost a major customer. The French government announced it will phase out Zoom and Microsoft Teams across all public administration by 2027, replacing them with a homegrown alternative called Visio. The move isn’t about features or pricing. It’s about control.

“Dependencies that seem most innocuous in calm times can be brutally exploited against us in times of crisis,” David Amiel, France’s Minister Delegate for Civil Service, told La Tribune Dimanche. The minister framed the shift as part of a broader European sovereignty push that extends from international diplomacy down to everyday government operations.

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Three quarters of Australia’s coal plants will close by 2035

Renew Economy reports that despite government subsidies coal fired power plants are being phased out. Why? They are old, cannot compete with renewables, are being sidelined by rooftop solar, are inflexible and struggle to follow load, will be too expensive to maintain, and face high prices for coal, and in some cases difficulty even sourcing the fossil fuel.

Slur first, spin later

The Trump regime never apologises. It never admits error. It simply scuttles sideways, trailing spin like ink from a startled squid.

On Saturday, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, on a Minneapolis street. Within hours, the administration’s messaging machine roared to life. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labelled him a “domestic terrorist.” Officials claimed he brandished a gun at agents. The implication was clear: he deserved what he got.

Then the eyewitness video emerged. It told a different story.

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Keynes’s Bancor idea needs revisiting in wake of Trump - Alan Kohler, ABC The US-dollar-centric financial system is weakening under rising US debt and political instability. Keynes’s proposal for a shared global currency, Bancor, is resurfacing as countries such as China and the BRICS seek alternatives to US financial dominance and a fairer trade system.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the “Stupidity” That Led to Hitler’s Third Reich From prison (1943-45) Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned that rising power can make people lose their independent thinking. He saw this “stupidity” as a danger that helped Hitler gain control and commit evil. Today, his warning reminds us to be careful when political power grows too strong.

French lawmakers vote to ban social media use by under-15s Legislation, which also bans mobile phones in high schools, would make France the second country after Australia to take such a step (The Guardian)

Government directed protection?

From verified account of California Governor. Note: TikTok USA now owned and controlled by US investors. TikTok in the rest of the world not affected.

You had to be there

There’s a particular kind of technological shift that’s almost impossible to explain to anyone who came after it. Not because it’s complicated, but because the world it changed has vanished so completely that the change itself becomes invisible.

I’ve been thinking about this since reading Seth Godin’s note on the Mac’s 42nd anniversary. He argues, correctly, that the famous 1984 Super Bowl ad wasn’t what saved Apple’s strange new computer. It was the people who made the Mac genuinely better: Guy Kawasaki building the developer ecosystem, Susan Kare designing the icons, the late great Bill Atkinson setting unreasonable standards for the interface. “Hype is a trap,” Seth writes. “Better is better.”

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Two former US Presidents framed the killing of Alex Pretti as a defining moment. Clinton called the scenes “horrible” and wrote that this is one of those rare moments “where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come.” The Obamas called it a “heartbreaking tragedy” and “a wake-up call to every American” that core national values are under assault.

President Clinton posted his on his verified Twitter/X account. President Obama used his official Medium account.

I traced back to the original sources as the information scattered across social media can’t always be verified. NBC News also commented on the statements.

Update: 28 Jan - President Biden has also issued a statement via his official x/twitter account. Ex-president avoids naming Trump but says ‘Minnesotans have suffered enough at the hands of this administration’.

The words The New York Times used

There is a sentence in Sunday’s New York Times editorial that deserves to be read slowly, then read again.

“Ms. Noem and Mr. Bovino are lying in defiance of obvious truths. They are lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes that require people to accept lies as a demonstration of power.”

That is the Editorial Board of the New York Times (not an op-ed columnist, not an outside contributor, but the institutional voice of the paper itself) stating plainly that the Secretary of Homeland Security and a senior Border Patrol official are lying. And not merely lying, but lying in a specific way: the way authoritarian governments lie.

This matters. It matters because major American newspapers have spent years tying themselves in knots to avoid the word “lie.” They have preferred “misstated,” “claimed without evidence,” “falsely asserted.” The conventions of objectivity have often meant treating obvious falsehoods as matters of contested interpretation. On Sunday, the Times abandoned that convention entirely.

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Victoria Devine in The Age, states Australia’s insurance system is under unprecedented strain as climate-driven disasters and rising risk assessments push premiums ever higher, leaving more homeowners exposed and coverage increasingly unaffordable.

‘Everybody’s at each other’s throats’: James Cameron says he has left the US permanently Avatar director, who moved to New Zealand after the Covid pandemic says he will soon be a citizen of a country where people ‘are, for the most part, sane’ - The Guardian

Europe drives to digital sovereignty, over US dependence. Europe is confronting a strategic vulnerability after decades of reliance on US-based internet infrastructure, cloud services and platforms. The Conversation explains why that dependency now looks dangerous, and how moves toward European-controlled alternatives could reshape the digital balance of power.

AI Dictation: Finally a computer that really listens

Dictation used to mean cleaning up your own mess. You spoke, the software transcribed faithfully (every “um,” every false start) and you spent as long editing as you would have typing from scratch. That changed when AI entered the equation.

I have spent a few days reviewing the dictation tools available in Australia in 2026. What surprised me: after forty years of thinking through my fingers, from typewriter to mainframe to personal computer, I may finally have a viable second mode.

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