France attempts to build new videoconference app.
Also, YouTube is now a primary care physician.

The New Government Project: Conference Call, But Make It Local

France, in a move that feels less like geopolitical strategy and more like a regional office trying to set up its own proprietary Slack channel, is planning to replace all those foreign video conferencing tools, which includes Microsoft Teams and Zoom. The goal, apparently, is to develop a domestic, 'sovereign' tool because trusting the US IT department to not listen in on your Q4 budget review is a risk no middle manager is willing to take. This feels less like a technological challenge and more like an enormous bureaucratic procurement process that will take years, cost a mid-sized country's GDP, and still result in a product whose 'mute' button is confusingly labeled in Latin.

History suggests these well-intentioned national software projects typically end up with adoption rates similar to a mandatory Monday morning 8:00 AM meeting, except without the free donuts. The comment threads already reflect this weary expectation; everyone knows the app will have three different versions for three different ministries, all while the real work still gets done via a quick, unsanctioned Google Meet link sent on a burner phone.

The AI Assistant Has Asked the Interns for Medical Advice

Google AI Overviews, which is supposed to be the sensible assistant fielding basic questions before they reach a human, has been caught citing YouTube as its primary source for health information more often than actual legitimate medical sites. This is the equivalent of the company's new machine learning system for internal knowledge management learning all its answers from poorly tagged PowerPoint decks and the ramblings of retired CEO Bob's personal blog. The study indicates that when asked a medical query, the AI is more likely to point users toward a video featuring a person with questionable credentials than a peer-reviewed journal.

This particular oopsie confirms the classic IT doctrine: Garbage in, garbage out, and AI just scales the garbage faster. The good news is that soon all of our health issues will be solved by a thirty-minute video titled "Dr. Chad's Miracle Juice for Chronic SQL Joins" and a desperate plea to like and subscribe, rather than the boring, complex, and un-monetizable advice from established institutions. The comment thread noted that this is all a natural extension of the algorithm prioritizing engagement over veracity; after all, a dramatic DIY diagnosis video generates more clicks than a white paper.

The Return of the Notebook: Developers Tire of AI's Good Vibes

After what felt like a mandatory two-year corporate retreat into the concept of "vibecoding", where one simply lets the LLM whisper suggestions into the terminal, one developer has officially handed in his resignation to the vibe, opting instead to write code by hand. Vibecoding, a term that sounds like a mandatory team-building exercise involving cheap crystals and a whiteboard, apparently involves relying on AI tools for code generation to the point where the developer loses their cognitive map of the system.

The HN discussion confirmed the fatigue; The initial euphoria of getting code 'for free' eventually gives way to the existential dread of having to debug that code later. It is a lesson as old as the first time a manager asked for "MVP" software; Velocity is nice, but the inevitable technical debt will always arrive, repossessed and with exorbitant interest. The new process will be to write by hand and then use the AI to generate the unit tests, or perhaps just write the Jira ticket.

Briefs

• Windows 11 Patch Tuesday: Microsoft confirmed a botched update that may cause some PCs to fail to boot. This is just an annual reminder that applying critical security patches is always a roll of the dice; hope your computer has a solid backup plan.
• Y Combinator Canada: The Y Combinator website removed Canada from its list of countries it invests in. Either they found a new and more exotic market for selling software to people, or the travel budget was cut.
• Apple AirTag: Apple introduced a new AirTag with longer range and improved findability. Great, now your keys can get lost in a completely different city.