Short-form video platform Divine launches, Mark Zuckerberg buys Irish castle

A new app seen as a spiritual successor to short-form video service Vine has been released to the public. Much like the original, Divine lets users create and share videos which are just six seconds long and repeat on a loop. The new app also hosts more than two million original Vine videos and – in a bid to further distance itself from other platforms – bans content made by AI. Divine’s founder, former Twitter employee Evan Henshaw-Plath, told the BBC he wanted to create the app because he felt social media needed “a reset”. BBC 

The big challenge for humanoid robots is still getting the technology to work well, according to industry leaders speaking alongside the World Robot Conference in Beijing this week. Robots are not yet as efficient as humans, and take time to learn new skills, creating a bottleneck for the industry, Unitree’s founder Wang Xingxing said, addressing the conference one day after his company’s 460% IPO-day surge. His remarks underscored the challenges for humanoid robots entering the human workforce. Shares of Unitree fell 18.7% on Thursday. CNBC

A “hyperscale” datacentre in outer London would generate more than 1m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to the carbon footprint of 27,000 flights from London to New York, planning documents show. The East Havering Data Centre Campus (EHDCC) in north Ockendon would be one of the largest datacentres in Europe if approved by Havering council, using 218 hectares of green belt to run servers and data storage systems for AI and cloud computing. The Guardian 

Mark Zuckerberg has bought an Irish castle and accompanying 440-acre estate, adding to his vast property portfolio. The Facebook founder and his wife, Priscilla Chan, bought Strancally Castle in County Waterford in an off-market deal completed several weeks ago. The price has not been disclosed, but the Gothic Revival castle and its estate could have fetched between €20m (£17.1m) and €30m, according to The Irish Times, which first reported the deal. Telegraph 

UKSOL has announced that it’s the first solar company in the UK to achieve regulatory compliance for plug-in solar kits, the first of which will be on sale in just a week. Those products are the UKSOL Plug-In Solar Pro Compact 460W Ground Mount Kit (consisting of a single solar panel), and the Plug-In Solar Pro Duo 890W Ground Mount Kit (two panels). Both of these go on sale from August 27 in the UK — when plug-in kits become legal in this country — albeit in “limited stocks” to begin with. Tech Radar 

Google’s approach to making smartphones has changed a lot over the years. It started with Nexus phones aimed at the tinkerer and enthusiast niche back when there were countless companies making smartphones. Today, there are far fewer, and Google’s hyper-polished Pixel lineup is seeing less competition and higher sales. So maybe Google thinks it can just keep doing what works. The new Pixel 11 series is Google’s most refined yet, featuring sleek designs, smart software, and incredible screens. They’re also rather boring. ArsTechnica