Linux fréttir

Apple's latest iOS 18.3.2 update is automatically re-enabling its Apple Intelligence feature even for users who previously disabled it, adding to mounting concerns about the company's AI strategy. The update presents a splash screen with no option except to tap "Continue," which activates the feature. Users must then manually disable it through settings, with the AI consuming up to 7GB of storage space. This forced activation comes amid broader troubles with Apple's AI initiatives.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remembering the fallen giant's first UK office

Reading Museum is hosting an exhibition marking more than 60 years since Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) opened its first UK office.…

The French National Assembly has rejected a controversial provision that would have forced messaging platforms like Signal and WhatsApp to allow government access to encrypted private conversations, lawmakers voted Thursday night. The measure, embedded within anti-drug trafficking legislation, would have implemented a "ghost participant model" allowing law enforcement to silently join encrypted chats without users' knowledge.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

London's Heathrow Airport resumed operations late Friday after an electrical fire at a nearby substation forced a full-day closure, causing global travel chaos with hundreds of canceled flights and thousands of stranded passengers. The explosion at a Hayes substation 1.5 miles from the airport knocked out power early Thursday, requiring 70 firefighters to battle a blaze in a transformer containing 25,000 liters of cooling oil. Despite backup generators, Europe's busiest airport couldn't maintain normal operations, forcing flights to divert to airports across Europe and as far as Bangor, Maine. "Contingencies of certain sizes we cannot guard ourselves against 100%," Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye told the BBC. "This is as big as it gets for our airport." British Airways, which planned to carry 100,000 passengers Friday, prioritized long-haul flights to Australia, Brazil and South Africa when operations resumed after 4 p.m.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Web infrastructure provider Cloudflare unveiled "AI Labyrinth" this week, a feature designed to thwart unauthorized AI data scraping by feeding bots realistic but irrelevant content instead of blocking them outright. The system lures crawlers into a "maze" of AI-generated pages containing neutral scientific information, deliberately wasting computing resources of those attempting to collect training data for language models without permission. "When we detect unauthorized crawling, rather than blocking the request, we will link to a series of AI-generated pages that are convincing enough to entice a crawler to traverse them," Cloudflare explained. The company reports AI crawlers generate over 50 billion requests to their network daily, comprising nearly 1% of all web traffic they process. The feature is available to all Cloudflare customers, including those on free plans. This approach marks a shift from traditional protection methods, as Cloudflare claims blocking bots sometimes alerts operators they've been detected. The false links contain meta directives to prevent search engine indexing while remaining attractive to data-scraping bots.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.