At its Made On YouTube event, YouTube introduced a new editing feature that lets creators refine long- and short-form videos through a chat-style interface, giving instructions in natural language rather than manually cutting footage. The tool can select best takes, add music and transitions, insert text overlays, remove speech pauses, and suggest edits based on conversation context, while still allowing creators to manually adjust the timeline. YouTube says the feature will launch on Shorts and the YouTube Create app in early 2027.
President Trump begins two days of meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, even as years of tariffs, tech restrictions and pressure on allies have failed to isolate Beijing. China's global trade surplus is on track to hit a record $1.2 trillion in 2025, and it has expanded trade ties and rare-earth leverage worldwide while exports to the U.S. fell. Meanwhile, Trump's disputes with traditional U.S. allies over tariffs and defense spending have left some countries more hesitant to align firmly with Washington against China.
Bloomberg reports Disney plans to raise subscription prices across Disney Plus and Hulu, citing people familiar with the matter. Ad-free Disney Plus Premium and ad-free Hulu would rise from $18.99 to $21.49 per month, while ad-supported standalone plans increase by 50 cents to $12.49. The ad-supported Disney Plus-Hulu bundle would stay at $12.99, though the ad-free bundle rises from $19.99 to $21.99, with subscribers possibly notified as soon as September 23.
IEEE Spectrum's careers newsletter, produced with Parsity, argues that AI tools function as multipliers rather than substitutes for human skill, meaning novices without foundational knowledge tend to produce low-quality 'slop.' The piece identifies writing as one of three skills workers should prioritize, arguing that clear writing improves both communication with AI models and the development of original ideas.
A Sunday edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter examines how designer Maurice Noble shaped the look of Chuck Jones' 1957 Bugs Bunny short 'What's Opera, Doc?'. The piece notes the film cost $35,510, took seven weeks instead of the usual five, used a pre-recorded score and ballet-inspired movement, and required Jones to draw nearly 500 pose sketches, far more than typical productions.
Career experts say many job applicants are experiencing silence from employers after interviews or applications, leaving candidates uncertain about their standing in a competitive job market. They point to overwhelmed hiring teams, high application volumes, and shifting recruitment practices as contributing factors.
Alibaba Cloud has launched Qwen Image 2.1, an open-weight image generation model with only 7 billion parameters, small enough to run on older consumer GPUs like the RTX 3090. The model adds native transparent-background generation and can combine up to 10 reference images into a single consistent output, and Alibaba's own benchmarks claim it outperforms closed models including Google's Nano Banana 2.0. Unlike its predecessor, the new licensing terms bar commercial resale without a separate agreement from Alibaba.
A developer roundup describes the state of JavaScript heading into 2026, covering the ECMAScript 2025 spec finalized in June 2025 alongside the runtimes, frameworks and tooling surrounding the language. Key language additions include native iterator helper methods such as map, filter, take and drop with lazy evaluation, plus new Set methods for comparing collections like union, intersection and difference.
Google has launched Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Gemini 3.8 Flash-Lite TTS, new speech generation models supporting over 100 languages. The models ranked first and second respectively on Hume AI's Overall Quality Index, with Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS also topping Hume AI's Voice Design Benchmark and its accent modeling category. Google says the models improve on long-form content and dual-speaker screenplay control compared to the prior Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS.
Amazon is now selling Black and Natural Titanium Apple Watch Ultra 3 models with matching Milanese Loop bands at $699.97, down from the $899 list price. The retailer says this is the lowest price ever recorded for these configurations, which previously hadn't dropped below $749. The discount arrives alongside other Apple-related deals including AirPods Pro 3 at $50 off and new Beats 360 ANC headphones.
Meta's Muse assistant, which the company says can call businesses on a user's behalf to make reservations or complete tasks, is actually routing some calls to human agents rather than handling them autonomously, according to 404 Media. An internal announcement reviewed by the outlet said Muse can 'hand requests to a trained human agent, who places the call and works it through,' and the feature remains in an internal testing phase Meta calls 'dogfooding.'
Radicle disclosed two critical security vulnerabilities affecting every released version of its code collaboration stack: network traffic between nodes is unencrypted and can be read by anyone observing the path, and the connection handshake's peer authentication can be bypassed. Security researcher Konstantinos Maninakis reported the encryption issue on June 24, 2026, prompting the disclosure.
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