Let’s roll this morning with some Good News that isn’t about potential but is really happening: only a few days after an artificial heart was approved in the EU, a synthetic cornea was surgically implanted to help a legally blind man regain his sight.

• A 78-year-old man who was blind in both eyes for 10 years has regained sufficient sight to identify family members and read numbers from an eye-chart.
• CorNeat, a new biomimetic implant technology company out of Israel, provided the KPro cornea, that can replace scarred or deformed corneas without requiring donor tissue. 
• The cornea is the front part of the eye, and can scar or degenerate through trauma or diseases.
• What’s different about the KPro is that it’s not an invasive last resort like other artificial implants (called Keratoprosthesis) but a more simple procedure without excessive cutting and stitches, and takes less than an hour according to CorNeat. 
• Dr Gilad Litvin, CorNeat’s co-founder, and inventor of the CorNeat KPro, said in a press release via Engadget: “Unveiling this first implanted eye and being in that room, in that moment, was surreal. After years of hard work, seeing a colleague implant the CorNeat KPro with ease and witnessing a fellow human being regain his sight the following day was electrifying and emotionally moving, there were a lot of tears in the room.”
• There’s an animation of the implant being set in place that’s fascinating, a little aggressively optimistic considering what’s at stake, and despite being renderings, probably not for those of you that are squeamish.
• But still, trials will extend from Israel to countries including the US, Canada, France, and the Netherlands if all approvals are granted, which is amazing.

🚨 WhatsApp has been asked to withdraw controversial privacy policy changes in India, which may impact its wider planned moves (Android Authority).

🤕 We asked, you told us: OnePlus needs a ‘miracle’ to improve camera quality, with little faith on display that camera performance can be improved (Android Authority).

🎁 OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei will announce his new brand next week(Android Authority).

🔥 A very rare Pixel 4a 5G price drop on Amazon: $40 off, lowest price seen (Android Authority).

📶 Wi-Fi 6E arrives at CES 2021 (Ars Technica).

👏 We’re getting closer to a Nintendo Switch-sized gaming PC: the 5.5-inch GPD Win 3 and the 7-inch Aya Neo are new entrants, and can run Cyberpunk 2077 (The Verge).

🍎 Apple supplier Foxconn to build $270M plant in Vietnam, likely for MacBook and iPad (MacRumors).

🗞 Behind a secret deal between Google and Facebook that’s behind the antitrust case led by Texas (NYTimes).

🚀 SpaceX will try and use a booster rocket for a record eighth time tomorrow morning, as it launches 60 more Starlink satellites from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at about 8am EST. In theory, a second Falcon-9 may launch 25 hours later, too (YouTube).

🧻 2020 Game is a fun little game about the very bad no good year: 2020 (2020game.io).

👃 Can this group revive the finicky, famously stinky Corpse Flower? (Wired).

🎈 This guy getting hit in the face by a bunch of colorful balloons in slow motion is pretty enjoyable (YouTube).

🛵 UK man tries to ride electric mobility scooter across the US; makes it 500 tedious miles (Jalopnik).

🐶 “Vets of Reddit: What was the worst pet name you have ever encountered?” (r/askreddit).

Hey look, it’s a Tesla in the breeze, visualized!

• In this very cool post on r/dataisbeautiful, a motion-tracked flow visualization was put together, integrating a calculated Computational Flow Diagram (CFD) with real video footage:

• Lots more discussion on the post, including lots of people who want to chat about and argue through if CFD matters, how aerodynamics are really worked in real-life …and why Japanese cars are so boxy.

All the best,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor