An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mac Rumors: A large number of MacBook Pro owners running OS X El Capitan are reporting widespread system freezes since installing the 10.11.4 update to Apple’s Mac OS. The problem appears to be concentrated on 13-inch Retina MacBook Pros (Early 2015) running 10.11.4. Users report that their system becomes totally unresponsive at seemingly random times, with no way to regain access to their Mac other than to force a hard reboot. The issue was initially reported by MacRumors forum member Antonnn on March 25, four days after Apple released what is the third update to the Mac OS. In Antonnn’s case, the freezes have been occurring “about once a week, ” first when browsing in Safari, but then also during the use of other Mac apps, including Adobe Photoshop and several third-party browsers. The freeze seems to affect not only the screen and mouse cursor but also the Mac’s Force Touch trackpad, which completely loses feedback. Apple Support is apparently aware of the issue but have so far offered no concrete solution. Meanwhile, some users have resorted to downgrading their system to 10.11.3 by restoring from a Time Machine backup or performing a clean install. Hundreds of others have posted to a dedicated thread discussing the issue. Bill Mattheis posted a video on YouTube of the freezing he has experienced on his MacBook Pro. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Mac Users Reporting Widespread System Freezes With OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 Update
HughPickens.com writes: Ed Davey has an interesting story at BBC about the proposed nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset, UK which at $35 billion will be the most expensive object ever put together on Earth. For that sum you could build a small forest of Burj Khalifas — the world’s tallest building, in Dubai, which each cost $1.5 billion. You could build almost six Large Hadron Colliders, built under the border between France and Switzerland to unlock the secrets of the universe, and at a cost a mere $5.8 billion. Or you could build five Oakland Bay Bridges in San Francisco, designed to withstand the strongest earthquake seismologists would expect within the next 1, 500 years at a cost of $6.5 billion… But what about historical buildings like the the pyramids. Although working out the cost of something built more than 4, 500 years ago presents numerous challenges, in 2012 the Turner Construction Company estimated it could build the Great Pyramid of Giza for $5 billion. That includes about $730 million for stone and $58 million for 12 cranes. Labor is a minor cost as it is projected that a mere staff of 600 would be necessary. In contrast, it took 20, 000 people to build the original pyramid with a total of 77.6 million days’ labor. Using the current Egyptian minimum wage of $5.73 a day, that gives a labor cost of $445 million. But whatever the most expensive object on Earth is, up in the sky is something that eclipses all of these things. The International Space Station. Price tag: $110 billion. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader writes: Humble Bundle announced a special “pay what you want” sale for four ebooks from No Starch Press, with proceeds going to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (or to the charity of your choice). This “hacker edition” sale includes two relatively new titles from 2015 — “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python” and Violet Blue’s “Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy, ” as well as “Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering” by Andrew “bunnie” Huang, and “The Linux Command Line”. Hackers who are willing to pay “more than the average” — currently $14.87 — can also unlock a set of five more books, which includes “The Maker’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse: Defend Your Base with Simple Circuits, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi”. (This level also includes “Bitcoin for the Befuddled” and “Designing BSD Rootkits: An Introduction to Kernel Hacking”.) And at the $15 level — just 13 cents more — four additional books are unlocked. “Practical Malware Analysis: The Hands-On Guide to Dissecting Malicious Software” is available at this level, as well as “Hacking: The Art of Exploitation” and “Black Hat Python.” Nice to see they’ve already sold 28, 506 bundles, which are DRM-free and available in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI format. (I still remember Slashdot’s 2012 interview with Make magazine’s Andrew “bunnie” Huang, who Samzenpus described as “one of the most famous hardware and software hackers in the world.”) Read more of this story at Slashdot.