HTC’s Boost+ is an application that ships with HTC phones that forces some apps into using less battery power by reducing resolution, and kills off some processes when they behave in a fashion that Boost+ decides is abnormal. I’d never really had any issues with it until a recent update and it’s been thinking several of my apps are behaving abnormally and killing them, even when it’s told hands off. It was time for it to go. You’ll need adb installed on a computer, USB debugging turned on on your phone. The command from an adb shell is
Just since formatting tends to get messed up, the underlined portion is minus k minus minus user. You can verify the package name should you be worried by looking in the URL here for HTC’s Boost+ on Google Play Reboot, it’s gone. It will return if you do a factory reset. Unlike News Republic it doesn’t seem to bug you for a reinstall. While this works on my device with no issues, it may not on yours. However it’s only uninstalling the app for the default user and not modifying the system image, so it should be safe to assume there’s nothing that it’ll damage by removing it. That said, I’m not going to fix your phone if it breaks it. Also if you’re seeing this on the website PCStoreNearMe, they’re still stealing our content and I’m still informing all the other places they’re stealing from (Verge, Vice, Motherboard, etc,) to throw lawyers at them. Powered by WPeMatico The post How to uninstall HTC’s Boost+ without root appeared first on PC Store Near Me. via Technology Latest News – PC Store Near Me http://ift.tt/2wqEr0F
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Apple released an ad for the iPhone 8 Plus, which shows off the phone’s big new feature, Portrait Lighting. The spot features a singer walking towards the camera, lit with the various lighting setups. Portrait Lighting is a new feature for the iPhone, which uses software to apply several preset lighting effects to a subject’s face. The various presets — Natural Light, Studio Light, Contour Light, Stage Light, and Stage Light Mono — are still in beta, but it’s a neat effect that builds on the iPhone’s Portrait Mode. Powered by WPeMatico The post Apple’s new iPhone 8 Plus ad showcases its Portrait Lighting feature appeared first on PC Store Near Me. via Technology Latest News – PC Store Near Me http://ift.tt/2x5a9js A new book explores the CIAs crazy plan to snatch a Soviet sub from the bottom of the ocean9/30/2017 During the height of the Cold War, a Soviet submarine mysteriously sank in the Pacific Ocean. K-129 held a crew of nearly 100 sailors, as well as a full payload of nuclear missiles. Following its loss, the US Navy noted the flurry of Soviet activity dispatched to locate the ship and saw an opportunity to gain access to their rival’s military secrets. They decided to locate and then steal the sub. The fact that this was physically, scientifically, and perhaps legally impossible led the team assigned to the project to — often ad hoc, or accidentally — create, iterate, and apply technologies that would radically change the transportation industry forever. Author and journalist Josh Dean’s new book The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History tells the story of this projects, which aimed to grab the sub from its resting place — three miles below the surface of the ocean. Spearheaded by the CIA and funded by a top secret black budget, the program required numerous uninvented technologies, an outrageous vehicle to carry and implement them, and a fantastical cover story to keep the Russians and the public in the dark—one that unexpectedly helped jump start the existence of an entire industry.
The ship that the CIA contractors designed was called the Glomar Explorer, and it was like nothing that had been built before. One of the largest ships ever constructed, the central section of its 600-foot-long deck was dominated by an enormous derrick, which could lower 17,000 feet of metal piping down to the bottom of the sea. Its hull concealed a huge claw that could be extended on this three miles of piping to grab the sub, along with a secret, giant-doored cavity capable of retracting, swallowing, and transporting it.
The Glomar Explorer was thus extremely conspicuous — it was so big, it could be seen from space. But because it had to operate openly and with impunity on the open seas, the CIA had to invent a believable cover story so the Russians would not become suspicious of their real motives. The one they settled on was that it was an experimental seafloor mining ship, built for an industry that did not exist at the time, and owned by reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, who was pressed into service to back up these claims. To foster the perception that this was true, the CIA hired experts to write scientific papers for mining and shipping publications, presented the ship and its mission at industry conferences and publications, and “leaked” the story to the mainstream press to encourage coverage.
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“I’ve been calling it the most specific tool ever made,” Dean says in an interview with The Verge. “It wasn’t intended as a step toward anything. It was built to literally do one thing, which was to pull a two million pound hunk of steel off the bottom of the ocean.” At the time, it was so beyond the capabilities of any machine on the planet, creating it required pie-eyed thinking, a nine-figure blank check, and access to some of the nation’s best scientific tools, thinkers, and contractors. This kind of carte blanche engineering was not an uncommon practice during the era. At the time, there was a shared belief that technological and social challenges could be solved by putting the smartest experts in the world on the topic, and funding them until they figured it out, and that, because investment and possible benefits would be high, the government should be the source of this funding. NASA is a key example of that. But Dean argues that the CIA was another.
“Because of the secretive nature of the CIA, this isn’t widely understood, but the Director of Science and Technology at that time was essentially this ridiculous skunk-works for ambitious engineering,” Dean says. “In less than twenty years, they built the U2, the highest-flying surveillance plane ever made, and they built the SR-71, still the fastest plane ever made. But the stakes of the Cold War were so high the argument was, the survival of the nation and the planet depends on this.” Like many experimental government programs in the era, much of the boundary-leaping technology developed for the ship ended up having extremely relevant applications. “Dynamic positioning was the big one,” Dean says, referring to the use of thrusters at a ship’s corners, which used special markers on the seafloor to help the ship maintain its position. This technology became important as offshore oil drilling became a standard practice, since it allowed a ship to hover over a specific drill point and insert and reinsert a drill serially into the same hole.
“It was also one of the first, if not the first, ships to have satellite positioning, to make sure that it was in the right place on the map,” Dean says, “this was so state of the art at that time.” All of this was powered by some of the first computers ever loaded aboard a ship, but more impressive than these early, room-sized machines was the computation involved in designing this behemoth and all of its necessary systems. “This was all done one slide rules and calculators,” Dean says of the engineering team. “There were no computer models, these guys were doing it on paper with pencil basically.” Closing the circle between fantasy and reality—like Argo meets The Abyss—scientific, industry, and popular interest in the CIA’s invented backstory actually helped jump-start the international practice of seafloor mining. A number of countries began exploring the possibility, including the Russians, who had clearly swallowed the phony tale. More pointedly, after its top secret mission was complete, the Glomar Explorer actually went into service as an experimental sea-floor mining vehicle in the now-real industry its fake cover helped to invent. The ship, then owned by Lockheed, was sent out for tests off Catalina Island in California, and successfully picked up manganese nodules from the bottom of the ocean. However, there was an issue. “We picked up a lot more nodules that we expected and jammed the system,” says Steve Bailey, a mechanical engineer who operated the tethered mining probe at the time, told The Verge. “And once it jammed, we couldn’t un-jam it.” There were plans to send the ship back out in this capacity, but new global sea treaties, plummeting mineral and metal prices, and other environmental and economic disincentives conspired to bring the program to an end. However, Bailey believes it still may come to fruition. “Lockheed still owns the rights to the seafloor where we were working,” he says. “There are estimates that at the rate at which nickel is currently being used, we may run out in four years, and some nodules are rich in nickel. There are some places where rare earth minerals are in the nodules as well, and the only place where you can get them now is China. So there may be interest again.”
Meanwhile, strong entrepreneurial government funding for outrageous, but potentially revolutionary, ideas, seems to be at an all time low, with the Trump administration ignoring or defunding science aimed at alternative energy, combatting climate change, and space exploration, and even of innovative collaborations between government and existing industry. Speaking on research that occurred during the Cold War, Dean says, “It was really a golden era of moonshots, literally and figuratively.” Powered by WPeMatico The post A new book explores the CIA’s crazy plan to snatch a Soviet sub from the bottom of the ocean appeared first on PC Store Near Me. via Technology Latest News – PC Store Near Me http://ift.tt/2x5N5B5 Last weekend, I burned through Neo Yokio, which is the new love-it-or-hate-it must-watch series on Netflix. It’s a six-episode anime voiced by a ton of big stars, but the most important thing to know is that it comes from Vampire Weekend leader Ezra Koenig. And I suspect that if you like Vampire Weekend’s simultaneous embrace and mockery of high society, you’ll also find something to like in the show. There’s a lot to unpack, but the thing that I want to focus on really briefly is Neo Yokio‘s world: it takes place in an alternate universe New York City where demons exist, there is exactly one futuristic robot butler in the entire city, and part of Manhattan has been flooded. (In a hilarious though unrealistic fashion, the water washes straight up to 14th Street and then stops.) What’s really weird is that it’s not clear if this takes place in present day or the future. There are smartphones, but the Soviet Union still exists. French Canada is seemingly its own country. And the Twin Towers are still standing, either because the city flooded early enough or 9/11 didn’t happen. I have no idea why any of these decisions were made or how they’re supposed to color the story, but I love that these strange twists build out a bigger, more curious world than a six-episode series ought to be able to do. (Update: I got an answer.) Check out nine trailers from this week below.
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AnnihilationAlex Garland went from hit screenwriter to hit screenwriter / director a few years ago with Ex Machina, and this week we finally got a look at his follow-up: a bigger, creepier sci-fi movie that seems to start off kind of like “Arrival in a jungle,” and then gets much, much stranger. I really like the look so far. It comes out February 23rd.
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Maze Runner: The Death CureThe hard part about sequels based on really specific premises is that the creators somehow have to figure out how to get their characters into the same exact situation over and over and over again in the sequels (see Prison Break for a truly awful example). Naturally, the third and final Maze Runner involves a maze, but this time, they have to get into the maze instead of getting out of it. The movie comes out January 26th.
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SpielbergHBO has a new documentary coming up that ought to appeal to film geeks: it’s all about Steven Spielberg’s films and career. Naturally, the documentary speaks to a bunch of major actors and directors who know and have worked with him, including Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. It comes out October 7th.
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WacoCouple things here: first, apparently Spike TV is being rebranded as the “Paramount Network,” which sounds kind of pretentious but is definitely better than Spike TV. Second, this TV miniseries suggests Paramount is attempting an early leap into prestige TV, with Michael Shannon and Taylor Kitsch offering some solid star power. The six-part series is about the religious cult at Waco and the subsequent firefight that broke out with law enforcement in 1993. The Paramount Network goes live January 18th, and Waco is supposed to start the same month.
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GottiJohn Travolta plays the head of the Gambino crime family in Gotti, a film about how John Gotti took over as a mafia leader and was eventually brought down. The film comes from Lionsgate Premiere, which makes movies that are designed to hit streaming services alongside their theatrical release, so this doesn’t seem like a huge, big-budget ordeal. But at the very least, it seems like a good role for Travolta. It comes out December 15th.
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Creep 2I probably shouldn’t be so surprised to see a sequel to the first Creep. The low-budget, found-footage horror movie seemed like it was too weird to be more than a one-off, but the film came from Blumhouse — the studio behind films like Paranormal Activity and Insidious — which loves to spin cheap but successful films out into ongoing franchises. That seems to be the case here, as there are apparently plans to turn this series into a trilogy. The sequel comes out digitally on October 24th.
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Darkest HourEarly reviews for Darkest Hour seem to put a big focus on just how transformative Gary Oldman’s performance is as Winston Churchill, and it’s easy to see why from the trailer. He’s totally unrecognizable (although, that may be more of a testament to makeup and costume than acting). I’m also really caught by the great visuals here. Joe Wright’s films always have a way of looking brilliant, but not distractedly so, and that seems to be the case here, too. Darkest Hour comes out November 22nd.
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Bill Nye: Science GuyPBS has a documentary coming up about Bill Nye and his work promoting science education. While the documentary covers his famous TV show, it seems to be focused more on what Nye is up to nowadays, which is more about getting adults engaged — and tends to involve going on news shows to argue with misinformed pundits. The film will have a slow expansion in theaters starting from October 27th.
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The Killing of a Sacred DeerIf you saw The Lobster, you’ll have a hint for just how strange its director’s next film seems like it’s going to be. And to be clear, The Killing of a Sacred Deer looks like it’s going to be really creepy and weird. Creepy things happening in a (seemingly) otherwise normal word are often much creepier than creepy things happening in an already creepy world, and that seems to be a lot of what we’re seeing here. The film comes out October 20th. Powered by WPeMatico The post New trailers: Annihilation, Maze Runner, Spielberg, and more appeared first on PC Store Near Me. via Technology Latest News – PC Store Near Me http://ift.tt/2wqE85T In recent decades, one of the largest-scale government-funded science research projects was the Human Genome Project, an effort to map the entire genetic blueprint of our species. Since 2016, a new version of that herculean effort is underway, known as the Human Cell Atlas. Anyone who has taken high school or university-level biology can probably rattle off a handful of different types of cells—T-cells, neurons, skin cells, to name a few—that exist in the body. Textbooks routinely recognize hundreds of types, but there are undoubtedly more types and subtypes that have yet to be fully quantified and analyzed. The Human Cell Atlas, will aim to isolate and categorize the over 37 trillion cells that exist in everyone. Hundreds of people at dozens of labs around the world, including at the University of California, Berkeley, are contributing to this effort. One of those researchers is Aaron Streets, an assistant professor of bioengineering. At the September 20, 2017 gathering of Ars Technica Live, Streets explained that he uses a relatively new technique, known as “microfluidics,” to perform sophisticated analysis on single cells. Microfluidics is often analogized to microelectronics, which uses transistors to amplify or switch an electronic signal. However, rather than using electrons, these “labs-on-a-chip” use small amounts of fluid, taking advantage of the physical properties of how a fluid containing cells moves at a tiny scale. Simplified versions of microfluidic devices can also be used to test for certain things, such as a home pregnancy test or a swab at the airport designed to look for anthrax or other harmful substances. Streets and his colleagues, however, use microfluidics to trap one cell, for example. “We’ll take a single cell, like a human or mouse cell, and we’ll deliver it to a chamber, take a picture of it, and break it open and sequence all the RNA or DNA,” Streets said. Doing this the “old-fashioned” way would be roughly the same as using a 1960s- or 1970s-era computer to perform a basic calculation—it would work, but it would just be significantly slower, more cumbersome, and very expensive. “We’ve figured out a way to capture many cells, put them into isolated chambers, and break them open so we can sequence RNA from single cells,” he said. “That’s kind of a breakthrough that happened maybe 10 years ago. The ability to sequence RNA from one cell—it wasn’t possible until 2008. That enables you to get a quantitative of a picture of that cell.” Knowing precisely how to quantify and define those cells contributes to the Human Cell Atlas, but it also contributes to a better understanding of how drugs can be more effective and how cancer treatments can more effectively target metastasizing groups of cells. “The ultimate goal would be where you could zoom into any organ or tissue and figure out what cells are involved [and] understand what those cells do at any given moment,” Streets added. For more from Streets, check out the full interview above in either video or audio form. And don’t forget to come to the next Ars Technica Live at Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland, California, on October 18. You can also follow Ars Technica Live on Facebook. The Ars Technica Live podcast can always be accessed in these fine places: iTunes: Listing image by Ars Technica Powered by WPeMatico The post To better grok how all 37 trillion human cells work, we need new tools appeared first on PC Store Near Me. via Technology Latest News – PC Store Near Me http://ift.tt/2wqE6eh |
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