Tech & AI News Roundup — September 15, 2026, 1:03 AM UTC

Quick links to what's actually happening in AI, tech, and IT right now — curated from real reporting, not rewritten, so you can go read the full story wherever it's genuinely worth your time.

The Supreme Court Just Blocked Trump’s Efforts to Control Mail-In Voting for the Midterms

The ruling bars the United States Postal Service from implementing restrictions that experts and election officials say would upend voting in November. — Wired

Valve is still figuring out ‘how and when’ to do Steam Deck 2

Now that Valve has finally launched its entire 2026 hardware lineup - the Steam Controller, the Steam Machine, and today's Steam Frame - are we any closer to a next-gen Steam Deck handheld? Valve isn't saying so yet. The company is figuring out "how and when we can deliver something like that," Valve designer Pierre-Loup Griffais now tells IGN. Valve has been clear for years that 1) a Steam Deck 2 — The Verge

Pubs in England and Wales to allow digital ID apps to prove age

New rules introduced on Tuesday mean establishments will be able to accept digital ID apps alongside physical documents. — BBC Technology

Is Big Tech’s AI slowdown a safety pact or a cartel?

When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, and SpaceX head Elon Musk loosely agreed over the weekend to slow down AI development, skeptics spotted an ulterior motive immediately. The AI titans had declared that their aim was to "pace the frontier," signing on at least partially to a proposal for embedding third-party auditors, regulating domes — The Verge

RFK Jr. headlines sold-out anti-vaccine conference alongside Andrew Wakefield

The event is hosted by Kennedy's anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense. — Ars Technica

Rocket Lab is seeing red about NASA's decision on a Mars spacecraft

"NASA’s award decision appears to be inconsistent with the eligibility criteria." — Ars Technica

AI infrastructure company Cornelis raises $205M to chip away at Nvidia’s dominance

The company also announced a product called Active Compute Fabric, a network technology that targets the fact that much GPU time is wasted waiting for data to arrive. — TechCrunch

Volkswagen’s crazy-efficient EV borrows an idea from Slate

Volkswagen's new efficiency-minded halo car is almost twice as efficient as the most efficient production car, the Lucid Air. — TechCrunch