News

Dorsey-Backed diVine Brings Back Vine’s Looping Videos

The reboot pulls 100,000-plus clips from a salvaged archive and adds strict checks to block AI-made posts.

Published

12 months ago

November 13, 2025

dorsey-backed divine brings back vine's looping videos

diVine has gone live with a rebuilt trove of classic Vine loops and fresh funding from Jack Dorsey. The app restores more than 100,000 six-second videos from the Vine archive and reopens a format that disappeared when Twitter shut Vine down in 2016.

The recovery almost didn’t happen. Archive Team volunteers scraped the site ahead of its closure but stored the material in huge binary dumps that were effectively unusable. Evan Henshaw-Plath (an early Twitter engineer who’s now working with Dorsey’s new nonprofit and Other Stuff) spent months cracking those files and stitching user data back together. He says the result captures most of Vine’s best-known clips, though millions of niche posts were never archived.

Creators retain their copyrights. They can request takedowns or reclaim profiles by proving control of the accounts linked in their old bios. Once verified, they can upload missing videos or post new ones.

diVine isn’t pitching nostalgia alone. The app lets users shoot fresh six-second loops but runs each upload through checks from the Guardian Project to confirm a clip was recorded on a real phone. Suspected AI content is blocked. That stance stands out as generative video races across major social platforms.

The service runs on Nostr, the decentralized protocol Dorsey has pushed as an alternative to corporate-controlled feeds. “Nostr — the underlying open source protocol being used by diVine — is empowering developers to create a new generation of apps without the need for VC-backing, toxic business models or huge teams of engineers,” Dorsey said.

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Meanwhile, Henshaw-Plath sees a simple demand: spaces where the feed is human. “Yes, people engage with [AI] … but we also want agency over our lives and over our social experiences,” he said.

For users in the Middle East and elsewhere watching automated content flood their timelines, diVine marks a return to a lean format that once defined early mobile video — now rebuilt on open tech and a bet that authenticity still matters.

News

Abu Dhabi’s Robot Kitchen Is Serving Up Biryani, Not Burgers

Circus SE wants to put a tiny automated factory inside the buildings where Gulf residents live and work, bypassing part of last-mile delivery.

Published

6 days ago

October 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

abu dhabi's robot kitchen is serving up biryani not burgers

Circus SE

The most telling thing about a new autonomous kitchen now running in Abu Dhabi’s Marina Square is what it won’t cook:

“We don’t do fast food,” says Nikolas Bullwinkel, Founder and CEO of Circus SE. “We’ve actively decided not to build a machine that can only do burgers”.

Instead, the CA-1 system is built around pot-based cooking: curries, pastas, soups and rice dishes. After experimenting with highly personalized recipes, Circus deliberately leaned back toward recognizable food. “We’re going with a chicken biryani because you know it,” Bullwinkel says of the AED 40 dish.

circus se ca-1 robot system

The Germany-based robotics and food technology company operates across eight countries, and Abu Dhabi is its first deployment outside Europe. More locations are expected there and in Dubai.

In Germany, its units can be placed in supermarkets, gas stations, airports and hospitals. In the Gulf, Bullwinkel wants them inside residential and office buildings, replacing some of the complexity of last-mile delivery. “We’re basically bringing a very tiny factory a few square meters into your building,” he says. Catering company Royal Prestige supplies the ingredients and knowledge of local tastes.

The CA-1 manages up to 36 refrigerated ingredient silos alongside automated induction cooking, robotic plating and a self-cleaning dishwasher. Two robotic arms move ingredients through the system with minimal human intervention. It can produce up to 120 hot meals an hour, and a meal such as rice and curry can take around three to four minutes.

Also Read: Ooredoo Qatar’s 5G+ Network Is Built For Machines As Much As People

Five cameras and multiple sensors monitor heat, temperature and consistency, an attempt to approximate what a chef perceives. “You can hear something gets burned, you can smell it, you can see it at some point,” Bullwinkel says. CircusOS, the company’s operating system, adjusts recipes in real time.

You might think of the platform as a threat to kitchen staff, but Bullwinkel frames Circus as a way for chefs to develop recipes and distribute them at scale. With that being said, rising labor costs and shortages are also part of his case for automation.