Daily Tech News 16 June 2026

• The Flynn Effect is a long-observed but unexplained finding in psychology that mean IQ even in developed nations has been rising by around 3 points per decade.
  
  That's stopped. (Futurism)

  "What I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch," Jagt writes. "There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires."

  Note that this hasn't put a pause on graduations; more degrees are being handed out than ever before.
  
  It's just putting a pause on learing.
  
  Yeah, I went there.

  More flagrantly detrimental to learning, plenty more use the tech to generate entire essays and solve math problems - or, in a word, cheat. That many universities have partnered with tech companies to provide students with access to their shiny AI models has only served to rubber stamp and accelerate the tech's adoption in the classroom, marooning individual instructors to figure out how to work around AI on their own.

  It seems the author went there too.
  
  It appears the Flynn Effect faltered in the early 2000s. Before I get too smug about that, it seems to have dropped off in Australia by the 1980s.

• Swiss voters rejected a proposal that would have capped the country's population at 10 million. (The Guardian)
  
  Interestingly, the group most in favour of this supremely idiotic move are those aged 35-49; with both younger and older adults more strongly opposed. Though no age group expressed more than tepid support.
  
  
  
• Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivered the commencement speech at Stanford. (Nerds)
  
  He barely mentioned AI.
  
  He still got booed.
  
  
  
• Cybersecurity experts are protesting the US "ban" on Anthropic's security-focused Mythos and Fable models. (Tech Crunch)
  
  A "ban" strongly favoured by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei right up until the minute he got what he asked for.
  
  Access to Mythos was always restricted by Anthropic itself. Access to Fable is still open to any US citizen on US soil with a Claude account. (I had access for a couple of days.)
  
  Update: Thanks to reader Defenestratus for prompting me to actually read the whiny self-serving glurge that Anthropic put out discussing the situation. Both models are now unavailable globally.
  
  
  
• Fox is buying Roku for $22 billion. (CNN)
  
  Fox still exists? Oh, yeah, I guess it does.
  
  
  
• Samsung has slashed 42% off the price of its 2TB 990 Pro SSD, leaving it at only twice the price it was three months ago. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Truly, their generosity knows no bounds.
  
  
  
• AMD's Zen 6 desktop chips reportedly have no integrated GPU, but have an NPU in its place. (WCCFTech)
  
  If true, this is retarded.
  
  NPUs are largely useless for desktop systems, and with no integrated graphics, users will be required to purchase dedicated graphics cards, which are far more capable for AI computation than any NPU.
  
  
  
• The MSI Claw 8 EX AI is a gaming handheld that uses Intel's Panther Lake laptop chip with its advanced Arc B390 graphics. (Liliputing)
  
  This is a mainstream laptop chip so these handhelds should be much cheaper than those using AMD's high-end Strix Halo.
  
  Should be. Aren't. It starts at $1799.

posted by Pixy Misa at 05:00 AM

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