Breaked Whole Records In Smartphones History - Pokemon Go: A complete beginner's guide

Pokemon Go: A complete beginner's guide

Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm and all you need to play it is a smartphone and a willingness to get outside, but just what is it? And why should you care?

If you don't know a Bulbasaur from a Butterfree this is the guide for you, covering the basics of Pokémon and the key things you need to know about Pokémon Go.

• Already a Pokémon master? Then you'll want our Pokémon Go tips and tricks guide

What is Pokémon?

Unless you've spent the last 20 years under a rock, in a cave, or at the bottom of the sea, you've probably come across Pokémon before now, but it can seem odd and even impenetrable if you've never played one of the games.

The series spans video games, TV shows, films, a trading card game and more, but at its core it's about exploring a world and collecting wild animals known as Pokémon.

Players capture them by using their own team of Pokémon to battle them, then, once weakened, throwing a 'Poké Ball' which they become trapped inside. But unlike the real world, where you'd end up with an angry, terrified creature, capturing a Pokémon bonds it to you.

Over the years more and more Pokémon have been added, with the number now totalling 751 and these range from critters that are much like real world creatures, such as Pidgey, which is essentially a vicious pigeon, to complete fantasy, like Mewtwo, which is a psychic creature that resembles an alien.

As well as collecting new Pokémon you must also train and level up your existing ones, to make them stronger and unlock new abilities for them. This is also usually done through battles, giving the games an RPG edge.

What is Pokémon Go?

Pokémon Go takes the Pokémon concept out into the real world. Players are still Pokémon trainers, but rather than exploring a virtual world you have to physically walk around.

Pokémon Go shows you a map of the real world with your location on it and as you wander you'll come across Pokémon, which you can then capture by throwing a Poké Ball.

Aside from having to go outside to play it properly there are a few other differences between Pokémon Go and other Pokémon games.

For one thing it's free and available for iOS and Android phones. This is in part why it's proving so popular, as previous Pokémon games have been exclusive to Nintendo hardware and usually cost money, putting up a significant barrier to entry.

The other obvious difference is that Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game, as when you find a Pokémon you view it through your phone's camera overlaid on the real world.

Picking your first Pokémon

Like many other Pokémon games, you get to choose your first Pokémon in Pokémon Go, however you're limited to three options. There's Squirtle, a water-type Pokémon that resembles a turtle, Charmander, which looks a bit like a dinosaur crossed with a dragon, and Bulbasaur, which is basically a plant with legs.

There's no right or wrong answer when choosing, as they all have the same amount of potential, so you're safe to go with whichever one you like the look of most.

Pokémon types

As well as all looking different, Pokémon each have different strengths and weaknesses, dictated mainly by what 'type' they are. There are a wide range of types, including normal, fighting, flying, poison, ground, rock, bug, ghost, steel, fire, water, grass, electric, psychic, ice, dragon, dark and fairy.

Each of these is particularly strong or weak against specific other types, a bit like a really convoluted game of rock paper scissors. Memorizing all the strengths and weaknesses can be a headache, but some are quite obvious, for example water types do a lot of damage to fire types, while fire is effective against grass.

Pokémon Go will tell you if you're using a type that's ineffective against whatever you're battling too, so it's something you'll learn over time.

Power and evolutions

In Pokémon Go your Pokémon don't gain levels, but you can power them up with a combination of 'stardust', which is collected by capturing any Pokémon, and 'candy' specific to that creature, which is collected by capturing more Pokémon of the same species.

You can also evolve your critters using candy, which turns them into a different, stronger Pokémon. Most can evolve at least once, but some have multiple evolutions. Charmander for example first evolves into Charmeleon, which looks like a bigger, angrier version of its initial form, and then into Charizard, which is a winged, dragon-like creature.

Building a team

The main joy of Pokémon Go is finding new and exotic creatures to add to your collection and to have the best chance at this you'll want to head beyond your back garden, as different Pokémon are found in different places and their locations often relate to their types. For example, you're likely to find water type Pokémon near rivers and oceans.

To have an effective team you'll want at least a few different powerful Pokémon of different types, so don't just focus on strengthening one. Taking down the toughest gyms will require a varied line-up.

Battling

Battles play a smaller role in Pokémon Go than the main series of games, as you don't need to battle Pokémon to catch them, instead you just throw a Poké Ball as soon as you spot them.

But there are still gym battles and in these you'll fight against other player's creatures, so expect a challenge.

Fights play out a bit differently too, as where in most Pokémon games they're a turn-based affair, here Pokémon attack in real time. Tap on an enemy to use your basic attack or tap and hold to use a more powerful one and swipe left or right to avoid being hit.

What are gyms?

In most Pokémon games gyms house tough trainers, which are a bit like bosses. In Pokémon Go they're defended by other player's Pokémon.

These are in real world locations, often around landmarks and points of interest, but they're easy to find as they're the largest icons on the in-game map.

They're controlled by one of three different teams- red, blue or yellow. Once your trainer reaches level 5 (a process which happens through collecting Pokémon and doing other activities in the game) they can pick a team to join and fight for that team to claim gyms.

Winning fights at gyms gets you experience points to help you level up further and if you take control of an enemy gym you can leave one of your Pokémon there to help defend it. This is worth doing as for every 21 hours that you have a Pokémon there you'll get Pokécoins to spend at the in-game shop, and stardust to power up your creatures.

You can also fight Pokémon at gyms owned by your team, and this is considered training and both helps you and the gym, as friendly battles add to its 'prestige', eventually allowing additional Pokémon to be housed there to help defend it.

What next?

There's no end game to Pokémon Go, for now all you can really do is collect more Pokémon and take control of local gyms, but the game is likely to develop over time. With so many players already Niantic would be crazy not to capitalize on it and add more content.

• Now that you know the basics head to our tips and tricks guide to become a Pokémon Go expert

You Will Be Amazed To Know - How Processor were made (sand)

Recently, Intel has published a page showing the step-by-step process of how a CPU is made. From sand to its final product, there are many complex steps involved. In fact, it’s absolutely amazing that semiconductor products work at all.

Step 1 – Sand

At about 25% (by mass), silicon is the second most frequent chemical in the earth’s crust (behind oxygen). Sand has a high percentage of Silicon Dioxide (SiO2), which is the base ingredient for semiconductor manufacturing.

Step 2 – Melted Silicon

Silicon is purified in multiple steps to reach the Electronic Grade Silicon used in semiconductors. It ultimately arrives in mono crystal ingots about 12″ in diameter (300mm today, the older ingots were 8″ or 200mm in diameter and smaller — the first wafers in the 1970s were 2″ in diameter, or 50mm).

The purity at this level of refinement is about one part per billion, meaning only one foreign atom per billion silicon atoms. The ingot weighs about 220lbs, and is a 99.9999% pure vertical column of slick glass-looking material.

Step 3 – Ingot Slicing

The ingot is cut with a very thin saw into individual silicon slices (called wafers), each of which are then polished to a flawless mirror-smooth surface. It is upon this totally smooth wafer surface that the tiny copper wires are deposited in the following several steps.

Step 4 – Photo Resist, Exposure

A photo resist liquid is poured onto the wafer while it spins at high speed (similar to materials used in conventional photography). This spinning deposits a thin and even resist layer across the entire surface.

From there, an ultraviolet laser is shone through masks and a lens (which make a focused image 4x smaller than the mask) causing tiny illuminated UV lines on the surface. Everywhere these lines strike the resist, a chemical reaction takes place making those portions soluble.

Step 5 – Washing, etching

The soluble photo resist material is then completely dissolved by a chemical solvent. From there, an etching chemical is used to partially dissolve (or etch) away a tiny quantity of the polished semiconductor material (the substrate). Finally, the remainder of the photo resist material is removed through a similar washing process, revealing the etched surface of the wafer.

Step 6 – Building up layers

In order to create the tiny copper wires which ultimately convey electricity to/from the chip’s various connectors, additional photo resists are added, exposed and washed. Next, a process called ion implantation is used to dope and protect locations where copper ions are deposited from a copper sulfate solution in a process called electroplating.

At various stages during these processes, additional materials are added, exposed, washed / etched and polished. This process is repeated six times for six-layer processes, which is reportedly what Intel uses for their current 45nm high-k, metal gate processes.

The final product looks like a jungle gym, a a host of tiny copper bars which convey electricity. Some of these are connected, some are exactly a specific distance away from other ones. And all of them are used for one purpose: To convey electrons, wielding their electromagnetic effects in a particular way to conduct what we would call “useful work” (such as adding two numbers together at extremely high rates of speed, the very essence of modern day computing).

This multi-layer process is repeated at every single spot on the surface of the entire wafer where chips can be made. This includes even those areas which are partially off the edge of the wafer. Why waste that space? It’s because the early chip makers learned that if they did not fill in these areas with (obviously) wasted semiconductor material, that the chips nearby also had a higher failure rate.

Step 7 – Testing

Once all of the metal layers are built up, and the circuits (transistors) are all created, it’s time for testing. A device with lots of prongs sits down on top of the chip, attaching microscopic leads to the chip’s surface. Each lead completes an electrical connection within the chip, simulating how it would operate in final form once packaged into end-consumer products.

A series of test signals are sent to the chip with whatever the results are being read. This level of testing includes not only traditional computational abilities, but also internal diagnostics along with voltage readings, cascade sequences (does data flow through as it should), etc. And however the chip responds as a result of this testing, is what’s stored in a database assigned specifically for that die.

This process is repeated for every die on the entire wafer’s surface while all dies are still on the surface.

Step 8 – Slicing

A tiny diamond-tipped saw is used to cut the silicon wafer into its various dies. The database derived in Step 7 is used to determine which chips cut from the wafer are kept, and which are discarded. The ones which produced “the right results” in Step 7’s testing are kept, with the rest being thrown away.

Step 9 – Packaging

At this point, all working dies get put into a physical package. It’s important to note that while they’ve had preliminary tested and were found to operate correctly, this doesn’t mean they’re good CPUs.

The physical packaging process involves placing the silicon die onto a green substrate material, to which tiny gold leads are connected to the chip’s pins or ball grid array, which show through the bottom side of the package. On the top of that, a heat spreader is introduced. This appears as the metal package on top of a chip. When finished, the CPU looks like a traditional package end-consumers buy.

Note: The metal heat spreader is a crucial component on modern high-speed semiconductors. In the past, a ceramic top was used with no active cooling. It wasn’t until the 80386 and later time frame, along with some extreme high-speed 8086 and 80286 (100MHz models), that active cooling was required. Prior to that, the chips had so few transistors (the original 8086 had 29K, today’s CPUs have 100s of millions) that they didn’t generate enough heat to require active cooling. To separate themselves, these later ceramic chips were stamped with the warning: “Heatsink required”.

Modern CPUs generate enough heat to melt themselves in a few seconds. Only by having the heat spreader connected to a large heat sink (and fan) can they operate long-term as they do.

Step 10 – Binning

At this point the package looks like you or I will buy it. Still, there is one more step involved. This final step is called binning.

In this process, the actual characteristics of this particular CPU is measured. Items such as voltage, frequency, performance, heat generation and other internal operational characteristics of its cache, for example, are all measured.

The best chips are generally binned as higher-end parts, being sold as not only the fastest parts with their full caches enabled, but also the low-voltage and ultra low-voltage models. Note: Based on market demand, these highest-end chips can also be sold as lesser chip parts.

Chips which do not perform as well as the best chips are often sold for lower clock speed models, or as a triple- or dual-core (Phenom X3, Phenom X2) instead of their native quad-core. Others may have half their cache disabled (Celeron), etc.

Performance and Operational Yields

The process of binning ultimately determines the final yield at given speeds, voltages and thermal characteristics. For example, on a standard wafer only 5% of the chips produced might operate at the highest-end clock rate of 3.2GHz. However, 50% may operate at 2.8GHz.

While this performance yield does not relate to operational yield, it is equally as important to manufacturers as they are constantly looking to determine the reasons why one CPU might operate at 2.8GHz without issue, but not faster, while another operates at 3.2GHz. As the cause of this discrepancy is determined, sometimes the chip’s very design can be updated to increase the performance yield (and operational yields).

Additional Info

Break-even operational yields on most semiconductor products comes between 33% and 50%, meaning if at least 1/3rd to 1/2 of the dies on every wafer work, the company makes breaks even. Anything beyond that is profit. Note: This isn’t always the case, but is a good guideline.

A mature process doesn’t always relate to the time involved in manufacturing dies, but rather is one generally considered to be in excess of an 80% operational yield, with a relatively high performance yield.

Intel is rumored to have around 95% operational yields on mature processes, which on 45nm processes on 300mm wafers means a tremendous advantage in production with their many fabs. A 95% operational yield means if 500 dies were possible from a single wafer, 475 of them would be usable, and only 25 would be thrown out. The more dies per wafer, the more money the company makes.

CPUs go through several iterations, called steps, during their design. The first silicon is called A-0 silicon, then A-1, A-2 and so on. Once a major redesign is implemented, such as adding a larger cache, a new math ability or some other major thing, they move to B-0, then B-1, B-2 and so on. Sequential letters are not required, and many of Intel’s current CPUs are at step R-0.

During the Pentium Pro through Pentium III days, each revision to that design was just that: A Revision. The difference between Pentium II and Pentium III, for example, was the inclusion of SIMD instructions and its original SSE ISA extension. However, this design received continued tweaking, which allowed it to move from its original 450MHz clock speed up to its final 1.4GHz in various forms, the last of which, Tualatin, operated faster than early Pentium 4s, due to its shorter pipeline.

Conclusion / Opinion

I hope you’ve found this article informative. It is truly amazing that any CPU operates, let alone as many as they manufacture and as fast as they do. And what’s coming is even more impressive.

The difference between x86, ARM, DRAM, SoCs, ASICs and other semiconductor variations, for example, often times is found only in the wiring. The exact same manufacturing steps and processes are used to produce those various products (with sometimes a different number of layers, sometimes different laser light, sometimes different chemicals, etc.). But generally speaking, it’s all “in the programming”, so to speak — in that copper-wire-based zoo of lines which, based on their arrangement, wield the mystic forces of electromagnetism into usable human work.

Quite a thing, wouldn’t you say?

How To Listen (And Delete) Every Word You’ve Ever Said To Google

Learners Bytes: This could be one of the creepiest things you would have come across in recent times. You’ll be surprised to know that Google gives you the option to listen (and delete) everything you have ever said to Google while using its voice search feature.

Do you know that every time you say something to Google while performing a voice search, Google records your words and stores it? Yes, if you go ahead and use Google’s voice search or Google Now to search for some stuff online, the technology giant saves it.

On its Voice and Audio Activity page, Google stores all your voice inputs and gives you the option to listen to them. I just listened to mine and, honestly, it freaked me out a little bit.

Moreover, each file comes with its plain text transcript and other information related to it. This feature is like a digital diary that also records your search history and YouTube history.

I was relieved when I found out that I can delete these recording. To do this, I had to simply click on More > Delete Options > Advanced.

Google probably records these clips to learn more about the natural language patterns of users and make its voice search better.
While this makes Google’s data storage policies more transparent and allows the users to access their data, this also reminds us to stay careful while saying something embarrassing to our phones.

As mentioned above, you can go ahead and delete your unwanted voice search recordings. Apart from the voice history, there are many other options available on the history page.

You can also click on this link and see the recently visited places and control your location tracking by Google. Here’s a picture of my location history over the past couple of years:

To tell you how to delete and download your entire search history, we’ve already written an article. Here’s how to do it.

Did you find this article helpful? Don’t forget to drop your feedback in the comments section below.

Learn 15 Cool Things You Can Do On The Internet For Free

There's a whole lot of stuff available online, yet most of us still spend our time scrolling Facebook incessantly, present company included. To whack you out of that self placed inertia, here's a list of cool stuff you can totally use for free online.

Some of it is useful, while some of it is just fun. Regardless, here's a list of cool stuff you can do online for free!

1. Make some sick beats at Patatap

They even have matching visuals to complement the sounds. Jam out with your friends for a guaranteed good time!

Source - howcast

2. Learn any course you can imagine at Coursera

Learn from literally thousands of options, a lot of which are free. Knowledge is power after all, especially unnecessary knowledge!

Source - dogster

3. Read hilarious online comics like Dr. Mc Ninja

Or go on to comic prospector and find something else you like (But if you don't like Dr.McNinja then you suck)

Source - cloudfront

4. Photoshop pictures online using Pixlr

No need to sign up or anything, just go on and manipulate your photos and make your friends look fat.It's a classic!

Source - filecluster

5. Play hi quality games at BigPoint

Just make sure you have an unlimited internet plan, otherwise you're screwed.

Source - gamesnips

6. Send files upto 1GB for free from Pando

That's HUGE!

Source - betanews

7. Learn how to make pretty much anything at VideoJug

Learn to make cool cakes or candles or dirty toys or whatever.

Source - onelittleproject

8. Learn to read body language and detect lies at Blifaloo

There's no sure shot way to tell if a person is lying, but you can always pretend that there is and get them to tell the truth anyway!

Source - salon

9. Get free tech support at Techguy

If you're having problems with your computer, this free volunteer site will sort you out. Forget your stupid computer guy who only shows up when you're not at home!

Source - zen cart

10. Find free wifi spots worldwide at WifiFreeSpot

It even lists some clinics in Delhi with free Wi-Fi! Now I can just pretend to have a migraine and get free internet woohoo!

Source - politic365

11. Send an anonymous email with 10MinuteMail

The email address disappears after ten seconds, so you go scot-free while your nemesis finally accepts that you are the better human.

Source - timeninja

12. Learn any language in the world at Duolingo

With a little patience, you can be spewing French pickup lines and Spanish cuss words interchangeably. Very useful.

Source - valuewalk

13. Watch from hundreds of documentaries atDocumentaryHeaven

It's got Kubrick on the home page, which basically convinced me that this site is legit. They've got loads of free documentaries ripe for the picking!

Source - planocritico

14. Learn killer magic tricks at GoodTricks

Everybody loves magic, so if you want to be the next David Blaine (Do you really?), then head on over here and start levitating or whatever.

Source - megnetudeconsulting

15. Torrent websites for everything else!

Just don't download anything illegal! *smirk*

Source - betanews

Get off Facebook and go do something useful!