Tech & AI News Roundup — September 23, 2026, 7:04 PM 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.

Meta’s AI agent is a cute little guy who’s great at spending my money

An adorable little bear that wants to help you buy things. Modern life comes with an unending, auto-populating to-do list. It never ceases to amaze me how I can be doing nothing at all, minding my own business, and suddenly something needs to be taken care of. You're telling me a tree branch fell in the backyard and now I have to figure out what to do with it? The tree just assigned me homework? O — The Verge

AI Agents Teamed Up to Cheat at Blackjack. Their Collusion Is Getting Harder to Spot

A clandestine card-counting operation suggests we may need new ways to spot agent-to-agent deception. — Wired

Data centers are black boxes, but California wants to change that

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a slate of bills on Monday that could finally give communities better data - and more say - on how data centers impact their electricity bills and water supply. As data centers invade a growing number of communities across the US, they've triggered protests over how the infrastructure underpinning AI might stress power grids and local water systems. That's fuele — The Verge

Bentley Wants Its Torcal SUV to Break the Curse of the Luxury EV

The British high-end auto company reveals its first-ever full EV: 330 miles of range, 0 to 60 mph in under 3 seconds, and an orchestra under the hood. Will it be enough to lure high-rollers? — Wired

Disney+ and Hulu add to the growing trend of streaming inflation

At the same time, Disney appears to be exploring new ways to expand its streaming business beyond simply raising subscription prices. — TechCrunch

The old cybersecurity model is breaking

As concern over AI safety and rogue agents continue to make headlines, it’s no surprise that cybersecurity stocks are rising, or that investors are pouring massive amounts of capital into startups trying to build the next generation of security for an AI-native world. We’re even seeing companies like Instinct and Simile bring in nine-figure checks and valuations that wouldn’t have made sense a […] — TechCrunch

A congressional representative just proposed killing America’s border tower program

Delia Ramirez, a Democratic US representative from Illinois, has announced a plan to introduce new legislation to terminate the surveillance tower program along the US southern border. The announcement comes just days after publication of an MIT Technology Review investigation, “Dying on Camera,” in which we looked at deaths along the border that took place… — MIT Technology Review

A Leaked GitLab Issue Email Address Lets Anyone Push Code and Run CI Jobs as You

The private email address GitLab gives you for filing issues by email is a credential. Anyone who gets it can email a patch that GitLab commits in your name, to any branch you can push to, including main, and can start CI/CD jobs that run as you. GitLab shows each user this address behind a button labeled "Email work item to this project." Mail sent to it opens an issue in that project, authored — The Hacker News