FlashFeed

Full text

Manchester’s integrated care board offers the health service a domestic alternative to the US firm, says Dr Devan Moodley

Regarding Peter Geoghegan’s article ( I investigated Palantir’s foothold in the British state – and what I found should worry us all, 15 July ), the nine years that Greater Manchester’s health system has spent without Palantir is a result not of caution but bold conviction.

Greater Manchester’s integrated care board remains the only one in England to decline the Palantir-built federated data platform, having concluded that its own homegrown data capability was stronger. It built that capability with British universities, NHS clinicians and domestic technology firms.

Continue reading...

Full text

Well, it turns out that Bethesda's executive producer Todd Howard and I have at least two things in common—we're both roughly 5 feet 6 inches tall, and we're both chronic Reddit lurkers. Admittedly, I only have IMDB to go by when it comes to the height thing. Maybe it's wrong! But the Reddit thing is 100% true, because he went ahead and said it himself.

Howard gave the folks of r/Games a surprise jumpscare last week, making only his second public comment on the site in the last three years. It was, unsurprisingly, under a post sharing Bethesda essentially vomiting out every single thing it's currently working on , which came shortly after the announcement of parent owner Xbox's catastrophic layoffs .

"Hey Reddit. I'm a professional lurker and read your comments all the time. Many here do and we deeply appreciate the passion for our work," Howard wrote. "I know I don't really post, and we're usually very quiet. Today's info was an attempt at changing that and letting everyone know what we've been working on the past several years, and a look at what's coming. So know we're constantly listening and keep telling us how to be even better."

Howard then goes on to say: "You'd be surprised how many great ideas I get from Reddit. So upvote and we'll do it. Maybe." Well, huh. I do have to wonder if Howard is taking screenshots of comments and projecting them onto the wall during meetings, or simply jotting down little comments he reads here and there. I wonder what ideas Reddit is churning out that were so smart Howard felt the need to take note of them in the first place.

More importantly, what subreddits is our man lurking in? Does he just cycle through all the Bethesda-relevant ones? Is he sneaking looks at what people think of the competition? Is he also getting fed posts for subreddits he's never even heard of, like r/GirlDinnerDiaries? Seriously, why am I getting so many r/GirlDinnerDiaries posts in my feed?

Whatever he's getting up to over there—and whatever calculated business decision was behind him cropping up in the comments of a random Reddit post to begin with—is a secret that will remain between him and his Google Chrome history, I suppose.

Full text

That's two last-second launch aborts in a row for SpaceX.

One of the company's Falcon 9 rockets tried to loft 24 Starlink internet satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California this morning (July 20), but the attempt was aborted just as the first-stage engines started firing up.

Something similar happened on Thursday afternoon (July 16), when SpaceX attempted to launch the 13th test flight of its Starship megarocket.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket tries to launch 24 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base on July 20, 2026. The launch aborted at the last second. (Image credit: SpaceX) The two events likely have little in common other than a proximity in time. They involved two very different vehicles, after all: The workhorse Falcon 9 is the most reliable and active rocket on the planet; it has already launched 84 times this year, with zero failures.

Starship, on the other hand, remains in the development-and-testing phase. SpaceX has high hopes for the giant vehicle, which combines full reusability with unprecedented brawn. (It's the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built.)

The two vehicles are also powered by different engines. The Falcon 9's first stage employs nine Merlin 1Ds, whereas Starship's Super Heavy booster uses 33 next-gen Raptors.

SpaceX decided to swap out two of those Raptors ahead of the next Flight 13 launch attempt, which is scheduled for Thursday afternoon (July 23).

The Vandenberg Starlink launch, meanwhile, is back on the docket for Tuesday morning (July 21). It's scheduled to lift off during a nearly four-hour window that opens at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT; 7 a.m. local California time), according to a SpaceX mission description .