You know that familiar orange traffic cone icon? The one that pops up when you desperately need to play some weird video file at midnight, and it just… works? That’s VLC – the media player that’s been quietly saving our bacon for over 25 years. It’s on billions of devices, plays pretty much anything you throw at it (even half-downloaded or scratched-up files), and best of all, it’s completely free, with no ads, no tracking, and no nonsense. But how did this little gem come to be? It’s a story of rebellious students, late-night partying, and one guy’s stubborn refusal to sell out.

It all started back in the late 1990s at École Centrale Paris, one of France’s top engineering schools. A bunch of students were annoyed that their campus network had tons of bandwidth but no good way to stream movies or music to watch together in the dorms. So, they decided to build their own solution – a streaming server and player called VideoLAN (because it was for the local area network, or LAN).

The project kicked off as a fun academic side hustle, but it was technically bending the rules by hogging network resources. The school mostly looked the other way – these were brilliant kids, after all.

Now, about that cone: The students in the networking club had a quirky tradition. They’d “collect” traffic cones from roadworks around campus (you know, after a few parties), and pile them up as decorations or beer-pong obstacles. One night, someone snapped a photo of a cone sitting on a monitor during a coding session, and boom – that became the logo. It’s been the same cheeky orange cone ever since, a perfect symbol of the project’s playful, DIY roots.

Fast forward to 2001: The first public version of the VLC player drops on February 1st. It was clunky, Windows-only, and looked like it was from the ’90s, but it already played almost every format because the students bundled in every open-source codec they could find.

Things almost fell apart a few times. The university tried to claim ownership and turn it commercial. The students’ response? Over a weekend, they relicensed everything under the GNU GPL (a super-strict open-source license), making it impossible for anyone to ever monetize it. Then they broke away and restarted as an independent volunteer project.

Around 2005–2007, when many original contributors graduated and moved on, the project was fading. That’s when Jean-Baptiste Kempf (often called JB) stepped up big time. He’d joined as a student a few years earlier and became the driving force – leading development, keeping it alive, and turning it into the powerhouse it is today.

JB has turned down massive offers – we’re talking tens of millions – to add ads or sell out. He even started a separate company (VideoLabs) to do paid consulting work around video tech, which helps fund things without touching VLC itself. The core player stays pure: run by a global community of volunteers, with the non-profit VideoLAN organization relying mostly on donations.

As of 2025, VLC has racked up over 6 billion downloads. It runs on everything from Windows and Mac to Android, iOS, Linux, and even obscure systems. No ads. No data collection. Just reliable playback, whether you’re watching anime with rare codecs, rescuing old family videos, or streaming something obscure.

Next time that little cone spins up and saves your corrupted file (or just plays your movie without fuss), think of those French students sneaking traffic cones, the weekend licensing rebellion, and JB saying “no” to the big money. VLC isn’t just software – it’s a reminder that some things on the internet can still be genuinely good, free, and built for people, not profit. And honestly? In today’s world, that’s pretty damn heartwarming.

On 9th July, 2025, Earth completed its shortest day since official records began, spinning approximately 1.3 milliseconds faster than the standard 24-hour rotation. While the change went unnoticed in our daily routines, it triggered global attention among scientists and timekeeping institutions that monitor the planet’s rotation with extreme precision.

Experts believe the Moon played a key role in this rare event. When the Moon is positioned farther from Earth’s equator, it can weaken tidal forces that normally act as a brake on Earth’s spin. Other factors such as movement within the Earth’s molten core, changes in ocean currents, and even shifting weather systems could also have contributed to the faster rotation.

Although the difference was just over a millisecond, such variations carry weight in the world of high-precision technology. Systems like GPS, satellite navigation, and financial trading rely on atomic clocks and exact synchronization with Earth’s rotation. A deviation this small can still affect calculations and require adjustments to maintain global accuracy.

This shortened day is not expected to be an isolated case. Scientists have identified similar anomalies expected later this summer, with projections showing that both 22nd July and 5th August may also be milliseconds shorter than usual. If this pattern continues over the next few years, 2029 could see the introduction of the first-ever negative leap second, where a second is subtracted from coordinated universal time.

While most of us will never feel the effect of a day shortened by fractions of a second, the science behind it is a powerful reminder of Earth’s dynamic nature. Our planet is constantly shifting, rotating, and responding to both internal and external forces, sometimes in ways that subtly but significantly reshape how we measure time itself.

AI tools developed by Elon Musk’s xAI are to be incorporated into the messaging service, Telegram.

Announcing the deal, Telegram boss Pavel Durov said it would see his firm distribute the AI assistant, Grok, to Telegram’s “billion+ users and integrate it into its apps”.

Mr Durov said the arrangement, which is due to last a year, would see his company receive $300m (£223m) in cash and equity from xAI, plus 50% of revenue from xAI subscriptions sold via Telegram.

“Together, we win!”, he posted on social media.

It follows Meta’s incorporating an AI service into its messaging service, WhatsApp – a development it was forced to defend after grumbling from users.

Media analyst Hanna Kahlert at Midia Research told BBC News the move followed the pattern of “social and AI trying to absorb each other”.

She said it was not, however, necessarily what customers actually wanted.

“Users primarily still use social platforms to talk to their friends, and see their friends’ updates,” she added.

“Adding AI into direct messaging inherently supplants that – it reduces trust between users and distracts from the current USP.”
‘Dark web in your pocket’

This tie-up brings together two of the most colourful and sometimes controversial figures in tech.

Mr Durov was arrested in France in August 2024, after being accused of failing to properly moderate his app to reduce criminality.

Critics had branded the platform the “dark web in your pocket” because of what they said was the amount of criminal activity being discussed on the platform.

However, Mr Durov has denied failing to cooperate with law enforcement over drug trafficking, child sexual abuse content, and fraud.

The platform has also rejected accusations that its moderation policies are not sufficiently robust.

Mr Musk has an incredibly broad range of tech interests, ranging from brain implant start-up Neuralink to his rocket manufacturing firm, SpaceX.

He also has a prominent role in the administration of US President Donald Trump, and campaigned heavily to get him elected – something that analysts say is contributing to slumping sales at his best known firm, electric car maker Tesla.

The world’s richest man has also invested heavily in AI.

He was a co-founder of the world’s best-known AI firm, OpenAI, the company which makes ChatGPT.

He subsequently left and became involved in a long-running row with OpenAI’s boss, Sam Altman, over its future direction.

Earlier this year, Mr Musk spearheaded a failed attempt to buy it.

He has also been seeking to develop xAI as a rival to OpenAI and other industry leaders.

In March, he announced it had purchased X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, in a deal that valued xAI at $80bn (£61.8bn).

Source: BBC.com