Those geomagnetic storms are messing with farming tech’s GPS systems

Over the last few days, heightened solar activity (and those heady geomagnetic storms) led to outages in the GPS navigation systems that guide some modern tractors from John Deere and other brands. 404 Media reported farmers have been told to pause using high-tech tractors that use GPS systems to program and tightly farm their land. John Deere’s tractors’ Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) systems can apparently plant precisely, down to the centimeter. A bit of GPS noise could derail that.

The weekend’s geomagnetic storm is the strongest in the last 20 years and reached G5 levels, considered “extreme,” on Friday and Saturday morning.

— Mat Smith

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Only 38 of a possible 65,000 have applied.

Apple’s recently added option for App Store developers to include links to external payment methods isn’t actually all that appealing. In a hearing on Friday, as part of the ongoing legal battle with Epic, Apple said only 38 developers have applied to add such links — out of roughly 65,000 that could. The changes were to satisfy an injunction ordered by US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in 2021. According to Bloomberg, Rogers said during the latest hearing: “It sounds to me as if the goal was to then maintain the business model and revenue you had in the past.”

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When less power makes for a better laptop.

The Alienware m16 R2 is a rarity among modern laptops. Normally after a major revamp, gadget makers like to keep new models on the market for as long as possible to minimize manufacturing costs. However, after the freshly designed m16 launched last year, the company re-engineered it again. This time limiting the GPU. By doing that, Alienware could rework the m16 into a gaming laptop with a sleeker design, better battery life and a more approachable starting price — built for what customers were buying when the original launched. It’s a good approach. Check out our review.

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Across three cities.

The Alphabet-owned autonomous taxi company has announced it’s now serving more than 50,000 paid trips every week across Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Waymo One operates 24/7 in parts of those cities, so if the company is getting 50,000 rides a week, that’s five bookings every minute.

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