Scoop: Solar storm is causing farmers' tractor GPS systems to go haywire. Many have shut down planting altogether during a critical period. A Deere dealer said accuracy is "extremely compromised"
https://www.404media.co/solar-storm-knocks-out-tractor-gps-systems-during-peak-planting-season/
@jasonkoebler Why they rely on GPS instead of placing some short-range radio-markers or laser or IR tokens on poles? exact position on geosphere do not matter to agroculture, compared to relative position on rectangle of crops field...
Something went wrong with all this hyper-centralization of agroculture tech and other such stuff.
@jasonkoebler @koteisaev and every geocacher knows GPS is damn inaccurate (and inconsistently so) compared to local beacons
@mirabilos @jasonkoebler @koteisaev
GPS is commodity hardware nowadays, using local beacons might involve implementing some things from the ground up 🤷
But I might be wrong about it, I'm not really sure what they use.
@m0xee @koteisaev @jasonkoebler yah, but still, if they actually need that kind of accuracy…
My employer did a stint in indoor navigation some years ago, you can get some results with blåtand beacons and commodity smartphones, but outdoors and on that scale and with the ability to build stuff into the tractors, I’d combine multiple approaches anyway