Favorites February 11th 2022

Spaceflight Now @SpaceflightNow

SpaceX is developing the Raptor 2 engine, a “mind-boggingly difficult” effort and a “greatly simplified” design from the Raptor 1 engine. The Raptor 2 also provides an increase in thrust from 185 tons to more than 230 tons. spaceflightnow.com/2022/02/10/elo…

That's a much smaller engine, and a lot more thrust! Interesting

Berci Meskó, MD, PhD @Berci

Researchers have shown that patients with macular degeneration fitted with a microchip eye implant are able to integrate what the chip “sees” with objects their natural peripheral vision detects. It's a follow-up study. #themedicalfuturist #digitalhealth

futurity.orgEye implant may restore some vision for people with macular degeneration - FuturityA thin pixelated chip implanted in the eye of people with macular degeneration may offer a way to restore functional vision, a new follow-up study shows.

It's a tiny chip that goes on the retina, currently "prosthetic visual acuity is limited to about 20/460", but they already have higher resolution stuff in the works.

Janelle Shane @JanelleCShane

I was astonished to discover that the structure of tempered chocolate is so fine that it can mold to the microscale ridges of a diffraction grating. It’s iridescent because of the ridges, like a CD. Even a shard is astonishing. All 100% chocolate.

So, uh, does it have any music on it?

AK @ak92501

Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis abs: arxiv.org/abs/2202.05263 project page: waymo.com/research/block…

The previous work I saw was generally built for comparably tiny areas. Multiple city blocks is a big improvement.

Timothy B. Lee @binarybits

Lots of people, including me, underestimated inflation over the last nine months. I wrote a post explaining our mistake, featuring the wisdom of @jasonfurman.

fullstackeconomics.comWhy so many economists underestimated the inflation problemExperts who focused on the supply chain missed the forest for the trees.

Great article, I liked how it clearly laid out the logic behind what happened. The policy implications are also interesting

John Gruber @gruber

Things can change, just one poll, blah blah blah, but this is interesting (and to me, not surprising — politics is about *new*): economist.com/united-states/…

Hmm, good sign right?

Nick Schifrin @nickschifrin

NEW: The US believes Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine, and has communicated that decision to the Russian military, three Western and defense officials tell me.

Very not good. Here's a very detailed article on the situation.

OSINTtechnical @Osinttechnical

Russian currency traders starting to take into account possible western sanctions. RUB/USD tanking.

The markets seem to think it's serious this time.

Stanford, January 2022