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Computerworld – In response to mounting reports that the iPhone 4 offers subpar call reception, Apple Inc. today said that an algorithm used in its new smartphone is flawed and promised to update its iOS 4 operating system in the next few weeks.

Users called the company’s inaccurate algorithm explanation “hooey” and worse on Apple’s support forum.

Apple blamed the faulty formula for problems users have encountered with the iPhone’s signal strength, which has been said to quickly plummet when the phone is held in certain ways.

It just gets worse and worse for these assholes. It is SUPER EASY to calculate signal strength. It’s measured in dBm, an abbreviation for the power ratio in decibels (dB) of the measured power referenced to one milliwatt (mW). When signal is extremely poor, the phone transmits at higher power. -125 dBm is very bad. -60 dBm is very good.

The phone physically reports these raw numbers based on how it’s transmitting. On old phones oyu were able to access the transmitting power in hidden menus. On Android, go to Settings–>About Phone–>Status and it wil ltell you signal strength in dBm.

But obviously users wouldn’t know what this means, so they are converted to bars for convenience. It’s not that hard to program a phone to say “okay, if it is less than -115 dBm, there should be no bars. If it’s between -114dBm to -105dBm, one bar. -104dBm to -95dBm, two. -94 to -85-dBm, three. -85 to -74, four bars and greater than -74dBm should be 5 bars.

Apparently, the iPhone 4 has a software problem where it displays more bars than it should. So when people are seeing 4 bars, it should really be two. In addition, this does not fix the antenna problems when people are holding the phone. Therefore a user can be seeing 4 bars but really have none when holding it wrong.

How do you screw that up Apple? It’s easy to do conditional statements!

Science Now – Scientists have found the first multicellular animals that apparently live entirely without oxygen. The creatures reside deep in one of the harshest environments on earth: the Mediterranean Ocean’s L’Atalante basin, which contains salt brine so dense that it doesn’t mix with the oxygen-containing waters above.

Newsflash. I had this theory since I was 7 years old and obsessed with space in second grade, and every time I told teachers and other people, I got laughed at. Who’s right now, suckers!

Who the hell says life needs oxygen to live? I always had it in my mind that maybe different forms of life can survive using different elements. Get out of your bubble people! Maybe oxygen is toxic to some organism on another planet.  Just because life on earth as we know it requires oxygen doesn’t mean that some other creature on some other planet can’t live by synthesizing let’s say, methane gas.

This is the most random thing ever but here goes:

This topic astonishes me. Did you ever read something or listen to a certain part of a song that gave you goosebumps? Tonight, I was reading one of my earlier writings and got the chills. The very next line of the writing stated “I keep getting goosebumps whenever I read the previous paragraph.” I didn’t even see that line yet, so it’s not like it was some preconceived notion. Anyway, for you science geeks, have some more info.

This paragraph was originally written about 6 or 7 months ago. As I reread the exact same paragraph tonight, I still got goosebumps. The fact that it still happened now when I forgot the writing even existed amazed me. How can some words on a page when read many months apart cause the same physiological reaction. Simply amazing how the brain works.

This happens a lot with music too. James Gedge once explained this in high school. There was a study of a song that used to give this one man goosebumps. The man then had a stroke, and the song did not affect him in the same way. He wasn’t able “feel” the song anymore. Pretty scary.

Fucking hypothalmus, messing with me… Actually, that’s kind of an important part of the brain. So nevermind.