I first tried VLC around 2003 or so. It wasn't a good experience. The player's interface showed me a garbled view of the video file I was trying to play. Then, in 2006 or so, I tried it again. Since, it's become my staple media player on every single platform and operating system, including the mobile. The reasons are many: the king of codecs, tons of features, a simple no-frills interface.

Recently, the VLC team has started working on a visual revamp of the UI, which should come live in version 4.0. This marks a significant departure from the established look & feel of the player, which really hasn't seen any big visual updates throughout its history. So I thought, let's have a look at the early work and see what the future has in store for us. Early impressions, don't get too excited, things may rapidly evolve and change and whatnot. Follow me.

Youtubedl-gui is a simple new graphical interface for the popular command-line YouTube downloader youtube-dl.

The tool is quite simple to use, just paste the video URL, select audio quality and format, video resolution and format, and click download! And of course, there’s an option to change the destination folder of your downloads.

Once you click download, a small dialog will pop up with the process bar.

Last month, we released Debian Buster with Kodi v18.8. While this version had the majority of fixes backported from Kodi v18.9 which was still in progress, we've decided to issue a final release of the Kodi Leia series in the form of an 18.9 point release.

Our focus will now be on enabling OSMC support for Kodi v19 (codename Matrix) which is now in beta release. This new version of Kodi will bring a significant number of improvements. However -- it should be noted that this new Kodi release will also introduce some caveats, and this is why we've chosen to polish the Kodi v18.x series of OSMC as much as possible, particularly as some users may need to stay on this version if there device is no longer supported or their add-ons do not work with the new version.

Kodi Matrix upgrades its Python implementation from Python 2.x to Python 3.x. While the majority of add-ons have already been updated to support this new version, you may find that some add-ons do not work. Furthermore, Raspberry Pi 0, 1 and Vero 2 will no longer be supported, meaning that this release will be the final supported version for these devices.

The fourteenth International Day Against DRM (IDAD) is coming soon, and the Defective by Design (DbD) campaign needs your help to spread the word. This year's annual day in protest of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) will be on December 4th, 2020, and will focus on streaming services' unjust use of DRM. We need your help to spread that message far and wide to both anti-DRM activists and those simply concerned with how in a world with continued technological advancement, our digital freedoms are increasingly under threat.

While in quarantine, we've all been conscious of how the way we engage with our favorite films, television, and music has been changing. Many (if not most) homes connected to a high-speed Internet connection have turned to streaming services that peddle DRM to seek entertainment, subjecting themselves to onerous restrictions in exchange for a way to pass the time. The Defective by Design campaign exists to raise awareness about the injustice of these services and other ways that media conglomerates use DRM to deprive computer users of their freedom.

In the last few years since the rise of these services, we've seen their influence grow from a mere drop in the bucket of video distribution to a stranglehold on global culture. Each more poorly named and unnecessary than the last, these services dictate what we watch, surveil us while we watch it, and through it all, make use of digital restrictions to keep viewers helpless and unable to exert meaningful control on how they choose to experience movies, music, and television. Not only do they keep subscribers trapped in the "walled gardens" of their service, but these dis-services dictate exactly how the works they distribute can be viewed, down to mandating the use of proprietary software and hardware that curtails user freedom. We deserve better.