Writer, privacy sheriff, AI wrangler
London
Joined March 2009
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James Flint retweeted
I received a report – we carried out two missile strikes, destroying two Russian Su-34s and hitting an Iskander launcher. Thank you, guys, for this result! Another aspect of our anti-ballistic work is the packages of interceptors, primarily for Patriots, that our partners can provide us. They must protect lives. We now have intel about the Russians preparing new ballistic missile attacks. We need the capabilities to shoot down this Russian evil and are awaiting the decisions. Thank you to everyone who really helps us!
James Flint retweeted
This seems like a great time to reshare my favourite Sir Patrick Stewart performance, ‘What has the ECHR ever done for us?’ It’s just perfect in every possible way … including the ending 😂😂😂 RIP.
🎥 The Guardian
James Flint retweeted
In 1952, an English teacher named Cecil Dormand secretly paid for a dirt-poor 11-year-old to take a drama course.
He never told him and the boy didn’t find out until decades later.
By then, he was a knight, that little boy’s name was Patrick Stewart.
He was born into a poor family in Mirfield, a small mill town in Yorkshire and his father came home from World War II a violent man, and he was violent toward Patrick’s mother.
Young Patrick learned exactly when to step between his father’s fist and his mother.
An English teacher put a copy of Shakespeare in his hand and told him to get up and perform.
He never stopped and left school at 15.
By 19 he was completely bald... most agencies told him he'd never make it because of that.
In 1987, the LA Times called him an “unknown British Shakespearean actor” when he was cast as Captain Picard.
Then he became one of the most famous faces on Earth.
You’ve probably heard that part.
Here’s the part you haven’t:
He spent decades as a patron of Refuge, sheltering women and children from domestic violence.
But he never stopped trying to understand his father.
He dug up a 1940 newspaper clipping that said his dad had come home with severe shell shock.
He went to France and walked the ground where his father’s unit was pinned down under bombing for hours.
He learned his father had PTSD, and nobody ever helped him.
So Patrick became an ambassador for Combat Stress, a charity that helps veterans.
In 2013, a young woman at a Texas convention told him she was a survivor of domestic violence.
He asked, “My dear, are you okay?”
Then he hopped off the stage, held her, and told her: “You never have to go through that again, you’re safe now.”
At Dragon Con, a Make-A-Wish girl dressed as Spock came to meet him.
2,000 people were waiting for him to speak... he sat down and talked with her for 15 minutes, making all of them wait.
He told her that since they were friends now, whenever she saw him on screen she could wave and say, “Hello Patrick.”
After 9/11, he felt helpless, so he brought his one-man A Christmas Carol back to Broadway for a full week of charity shows.
He played every character himself and donated every cent.
In 2019 he did it again, and every dollar went to feeding hungry New Yorkers.
In 2017, he fostered a pit bull named Ginger, who had been rescued from a dogfighting ring.
She was his first dog in more than 50 years.
He couldn’t bring her home to England, so he found her a family.
Then he kept fostering more.
When he said he was done with Star Trek so many people told him the show had gotten them through the hardest times of their lives.
So he wanted to see if Picard could do it one more time.
Rest in Peace, Sir Patrick 🖖
James Flint retweeted
BREAKING: Claude Code found 14,219 photos of my face on my Android that I never took. Phone was secretly taking them almost every time I picked it up. Even when I was just lying in bed. Even at home.
Not screenshots. Real frames from the front camera. On the train. In the car. At home. When I just grabbed it to check the time.
They were just sitting in a system cache. Timestamps and GPS on them. Nothing in Gallery. Nothing in Recently Deleted.
Plugged the phone into my laptop, made a full backup, told Claude Code to look for any front-camera files that weren’t in my photos. It pulled /data/system/users/0/faceunlock/cache and another folder inside Google Play Services. Over 14 thousand files. Normal ones and infrared from Face Unlock. Every single one had time and location.
Started scrolling. Almost everything from the last 15 months. Then I saw a file created 2 seconds ago. I was still looking at the folder. Phone kept taking photos while I was reading this.
Google and the phone makers say Face Unlock turns everything into a mathematical model and deletes the image right away. On this phone the raw frames were just sitting there. Some of the processes writing to that folder were from system diagnostics. Couple of old apps that still had camera permission could also get in.
Turned off diagnostics, revoked camera access from everything that doesn’t need it, cleared the cache. But how many of these frames already went somewhere else, I don’t know.
If you want to check yours, plug it in, make a full backup or use ADB, and ask Claude to look for front-camera files outside your Gallery. Path above is where mine were.
Claude Code found 145,763 photos I permanently deleted from my iPhone.
Three years of deleted photos and videos still sitting in a hidden cache. Any app with file access can read them.
I plugged my iPhone into my MacBook to run a backup. Claude Code was doing the security audit from my last post and flagged a directory I wasn't even looking for.
PhotoData/Thumbnails. Over 146,000 files. Photos, videos, screenshots. Every single one was something I deleted.
Photos from 2023, 2024 and 2025. The ones I deleted the second after taking them. The ones I cleared from Recently Deleted. The ones I deleted three separate times because I wanted to be sure they were gone. All still there.
Passport photo I took for a visa application in 2023.
Screenshots of my bank app with full account numbers visible.
Private photos I sent someone and immediately deleted after a breakup.
Screenshot of my crypto seed phrase I took temporarily in 2022.
Photo of my ID and credit card I took to remember the numbers and deleted 5 seconds later.
Screenshots of my ex's private Instagram stories I saved and permanently deleted in 2023.
Some were full resolution. All organized by date going back to 2021.
When you delete a photo on iPhone, iOS removes it from your camera roll and Recently Deleted. It keeps a compressed copy in a Spotlight search index cache so your phone can find things when you search. Apple never clears it. Not after 30 days. Not after a year. Never.
They told you it was permanently deleted. It wasn't.
I checked which apps on my phone had Files and Folders access. 23 apps. Weather apps. QR code scanners. PDF readers. A flashlight app I downloaded in 2022. Any one of them could have been reading every photo I ever deleted this entire time.
Went from 23 apps to 3 in about two minutes.
Full step by step below. Takes 2 minutes. Save it so you don't lose it and send it to anyone with an iPhone.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The video is an old, misappropriated clip from 2023, and the accompanying claims are fabricated.
x.com/HarshithLucky3…
Big congrats to Raye on winning the Mercury Prize. After seeing her incredible set at Reading this year, i can say she fully deserves it
James Flint retweeted
The final pieces of the puzzle are falling into place, revealing an increasingly disturbing picture of what is happening behind the scenes in Washington.
If you are still wondering where Donald Trump's hysterical attacks on Kyiv come from, why he keeps making absurd claims about "the rain that saved Ukraine," and why he responds so aggressively to journalists who challenge him, consider the analysis of someone who understands the inner workings of the White House.
Dr. Fiona Hill, a former senior White House national security official and one of America's leading experts on Russia, has offered a deeply troubling interpretation of Trump's behavior.
Trump wants Zelenskyy to capitulate.
Why? Because, according to this interpretation, the entire situation comes down to something painfully simple: Trump's wounded ego.
This is a man who promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. He imagined himself receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and being celebrated as one of the greatest peacemakers in history. He envisioned a spectacular diplomatic triumph that would secure his place in the history books.
Instead, his grand promises have collided with reality.
Months have passed, the magical peace agreement has failed to materialize, and the Kremlin dictator continues to reject proposals that do not satisfy his demands. Putin has repeatedly demonstrated that he has little interest in helping Trump achieve his political ambitions.
So who should Trump blame for this humiliating failure?
Himself? Absolutely not. In Trump's political universe, admitting a mistake is practically unthinkable.
Putin? Apparently not. Trump continues to treat the Kremlin dictator as a powerful leader worthy of respect, despite Russia's continuing destruction of Ukrainian cities and the deaths of innocent civilians.
That leaves one convenient target: Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump is furious because the Ukrainian president refuses to surrender, refuses to kneel before Moscow, and refuses to sign an agreement that would sacrifice his country's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
He is furious because an entire nation refuses to capitulate to an aggressor merely so the 47th president of the United States can stand before the cameras and declare himself the man who ended the war.
And now, as Hill's analysis suggests, the pressure is increasingly being directed not at Moscow, which launched the invasion, but at Kyiv, which is fighting for its survival.
The apparent calculation is that Washington, potentially supported by war-weary European governments, can pressure Ukraine into accepting terms that would allow Trump to claim a diplomatic victory, regardless of the long-term consequences for Ukrainian security.
But the price of this political spectacle is not measured in television ratings, headlines, or Nobel Prize nominations.
It is measured in the blood of Ukrainian soldiers defending their country in freezing trenches. It is measured in the lives of civilians killed by Russian missiles and drones, in destroyed homes, shattered families, kidnapped children, and entire cities reduced to ruins.
Ukraine is fighting an aggressor determined to destroy its independence. At the same time, Ukrainians must confront the possibility that some of those who call themselves allies may place their own political ambitions above Ukraine's survival.
There is something profoundly disturbing about demanding concessions from the country being invaded while treating the invading dictator as an indispensable partner in negotiations.
Ukraine did not start this war.Ukraine did not invade Russia.Ukraine is not responsible for Putin's imperial ambitions or Trump's unfulfilled political promises.
And Ukrainians should not be expected to pay for anyone's wounded pride with their freedom,their territory,or their lives.
A peace agreement that rewards aggression and leaves Ukraine defenseless is not a historic diplomatic victory. It risks becoming an invitation to the next war.
James Flint retweeted
JD - I've got 15 free minutes before my son's hockey practice ends, so let me see how many of Trump's enrichment schemes you didn't see that I can remind you of.
1/ First one is easy: Trump has executed over 30,000 stock trades, many on inside information, netting him millions.
James Flint retweeted
On October 16, 2019, I told Donald Trump, “With you, Mr. President, all roads lead to Putin.”
On October 16, 2026, Trump signed an executive order waiving new sanctions on Russia passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed into law just last month.
This decision insults America’s commitment to democracy and our brave men and women in uniform, as Russia helps Iran target American forces.
I join Republican senators in condemning this unconscionable capitulation to a Russian dictator who illegally invaded Ukraine and butchers innocent civilians.
As I have asked for years: What does Putin have on Trump that he would sell out America’s values?
Well said.
People seem confused about why Tesla is getting so much backlash over its new "flying Roadster." For those of us who were once genuinely enthusiastic about Tesla, this isn't about hating innovation. It's about a long history of broken promises, misleading expectations, and increasingly absurd marketing.
Tesla unveiled the second-generation Roadster in 2017, took customer deposits, and promised deliveries in 2020. Six years past that deadline, it still hasn't delivered the car. Instead, it's demonstrating an even more outrageous version with features that will likely never make it into production. The original 2nd gen Roadster would still be an amazing car today. Why not just deliver what was promised?
Then there's Full Self-Driving. Tesla marketed the idea that Model 3 owners could turn their cars into income-generating robotaxis. That never materialized. Even if the technology eventually gets there, the opportunity has already passed for many early buyers. Timing matters. Delivering something a decade late isn't fulfilling the promise you sold to customers.
And then there's Solar Roof. Unveiled in 2016 as a revolutionary approach to residential solar, it struggled with costs, installation challenges, and adoption far below expectations. After nearly a decade, Tesla discontinued it entirely in August 2026. Another grand vision abandoned, leaving existing customers with a discontinued product to maintain.
Then came the Cybertruck, marketed as a nearly indestructible, revolutionary truck. Instead, we got a vehicle with questionable build quality, numerous recalls, expensive repairs, disappointing results in several real-world off-road tests, and specifications that fell short of the original promises. It literally looks like a dumpster, but aesthetics aside, the collapsing demand speaks volumes about the reality of what Tesla delivered. Another heavily hyped product that fell dramatically short of expectations.
This is how consumer trust erodes. Not through one disappointment, but through years of accumulating them. And this is part of the reason why many people who were once enthusiastic about Tesla have become critical and cynical about it.
But there's something even more fundamental here: Tesla has completely departed from the grounded, practical vision that made so many of us enthusiastic about the company in the first place.
Electric cars were ambitious, but the idea was grounded in reality. People could charge at home, infrastructure could gradually expand, technology could improve, and millions of ordinary people could eventually benefit. There was a realistic path toward mass adoption.
What the hell does a flying Roadster powered by compressed-air thrusters have to do with any of that?
It's an expensive, impractical engineering stunt with enormous packaging, safety, and regulatory challenges, and no credible near-term path toward mass-market usefulness. Modern electric cars already achieve ridiculous acceleration without this nonsense. What practical problem does it solve? Who actually needs it? When will ordinary consumers benefit?
And watching Tesla fans compare this experimental prototype in a Roadster-shaped shell to actual production vehicles people can buy today is ridiculous.
What's especially infuriating is the cult-like mentality surrounding all of this. You can't point out the history of failed promises, question the practicality, or demand realistic timelines without being accused of being a "hater" or having "Elon derangement syndrome."
Tesla deserves recognition for helping make electric cars a reality, but that success doesn't give it a blank check to keep marketing increasingly fantastical promises while failing to deliver on previous commitments.
This isn't hatred. It's disappointment from people who once believed in the company, watched it accomplish extraordinary things, and have since watched it increasingly substitute practical innovation with spectacle and promises.
Elon fanboys are also ignoring a bigger pattern that goes beyond Tesla.
What made many of us enthusiastic about Elon and Tesla and in the first place was a grounded vision of technological progress that could genuinely improve millions of lives. Electric cars were ambitious, but practical, achievable, and useful to ordinary people. Now we're supposed to get excited about flying cars with compressed-air thrusters that have no credible path to mass adoption and solve no meaningful problem for the average consumer.
It's the same kind of thinking behind marketing the colonization of Mars as some urgent necessity for humanity's survival. There's nothing wrong with space exploration, but Earth isn't about to become uninhabitable because of the Sun. We're talking about geological timescales, while humanity faces enormous problems RIGHT NOW: poverty, hunger, access to education, corruption, abuse of power, wars, and a lack of government accountability. We have plenty of very real problems to solve before worrying about humanity's survival on another planet.
And then there's DOGE. I was genuinely excited about the original idea of making government more efficient, reducing waste, and increasing accountability. Instead, we got questionable savings figures, inexperienced people making sweeping decisions, serious concerns over access to sensitive personal information, and an initiative that ultimately fizzled out without delivering its grand promises. Another enormous narrative that fell apart when confronted with reality.
That's what makes all of this so frustrating. It's not that we stopped believing in technological progress. It's that we've watched someone who once pursued grounded, transformative ideas increasingly embrace fantastical promises, political spectacle, and questionable narratives disconnected from practical reality.
And somehow, pointing out this history of disappointment gets you labeled a "hater" or accused of having "Elon derangement syndrome."
The problem isn't dreaming big. It's repeatedly selling people those dreams, failing to deliver, and then expecting everyone to applaud the next, even more ridiculous promise without asking what happened to the last one.
The world doesn't need more spectacular promises. It needs practical solutions to real problems, honest expectations, and accountability for what was promised. That's what made Tesla exciting in the first place, and that's what so many of us feel has been betrayed.
James Flint retweeted
Step by step, day by day, Americans experience the big social media platforms becoming Orwellian political censors. The US needs a federal government that will tax them and break them up; the democratic world needs to learn the lesson and protect itself.
James Flint retweeted
Dear @realDonaldTrump,
Russia invaded Ukraine and killed, raped and mutilated innocent Ukrainians. They also, according to your own wife, kidnapped 20,000 Ukrainian children.
Why are you putting America on the side of killers, rapists and kidnappers?
James Flint retweeted
It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say. But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old. Five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen. If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately. But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically.
Congresswoman Omar went on to graduate from college, work as a community organizer, become the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S., and win a seat in Congress. There, she has been one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics, which has led the president to repeatedly single her out as someone who he believes does not belong in this country.
Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen. Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case.
Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.
In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota.
The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.
James Flint retweeted
In 1986 the BBC spent about $4 million turning a book that monks wrote in 1086 into a fancy digital archive. By 2002 almost nobody could open it anymore. Meanwhile the original book is still sitting in a building in London, and researchers read it all the time.
I think about that story every time someone calls libraries the real data centers, because once you run the numbers the joke holds up way better than it should.
The white and gold hall in these photos is the library at Admont Abbey in Austria. It opened in 1776, the same year as the Declaration of Independence. When a fire wiped out most of the monastery in 1865, the library made it through.
Now spec it like a data center. The abbey owns about 200,000 books, and a typical book is around half a megabyte of plain text. So 950 years of monks collecting adds up to roughly 100 gigabytes, which is less than most phones hold. There's no computing power and no internet connection, and if you want to look something up you have to drive into the Austrian Alps and walk in.
On paper it's a terrible data center, and it's been up and running for 250 years.
Compare that to what Big Tech is building right now. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta are on pace to spend close to $700 billion this year, mostly on servers and AI chips. Their own accounting assumes that hardware is worn out in five or six years. Amazon actually shortened its timeline last year because AI chips go stale so fast, and some investors, Michael Burry included, think the honest number is more like two or three.
Go back to the BBC project and you can see why digital storage ages like milk. About a million people sent in photos, maps and stories about everyday life in 1980s Britain. All of it went onto special laserdiscs that only played on one custom BBC computer setup, and once those machines disappeared, so did the access. A team at Leeds and the University of Michigan, where I went to school, ended up writing software that pretends to be a 1986 computer just to get the data back.
The book from 1086 never needed anyone to rescue it.
The AI labs figured out what rooms like these are worth before anyone else did. One of them paid $1.5 billion, the biggest copyright settlement in history, over the books it trained on, because edited, published writing teaches a model things the open internet can't. A lot of what the chatbots in those $700 billion buildings know about writing came from shelves like the ones in these photos, and those shelves will still be standing long after every one of those chips gets sold for scrap.
James Flint retweeted
A narrow strip of unused land beside one of London's busiest roads has been transformed into 97 homes.
Designed by Peter Barber Architects, Edgewood Mews in North London features two rows of distinctive brick buildings arranged around a car-free pedestrian street.
The buildings facing the North Circular Road help shield the residential area from traffic noise, creating a quieter space between the two rows.
Half of the homes are designated as affordable housing, and the development also includes a café, a corner shop, and underground parking.
James Flint retweeted
Trump's abandonment of a democratic Ukraine and embrace of autocratic Russia during wartime will be recorded in future history books as one of the greatest, tragic mistakes in American foreign policy in our nation's history.
James Flint retweeted
Hey, @elonmusk, big man, are you playing politics with your products again?
As your European customers, we are watching you.
⚡️ 'This cannot be a coincidence' — Ukraine's Starlink access restricted without warning, Zelensky adviser says.
Ukraine relies on Starlink to operate its mid-strike drones in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
kyivindependent.com/this-can…
James Flint retweeted
This is how the Trump administration works.
If you don't succumb to their threats or pay their bribes they suspend intelligence sharing and let women and children get bombed in Ukraine.
It's disgusting and horrific and too many Americans are silent on this.
#SlavaUkraïni
A Russian ballistic missile attack on Kyiv. Once again, no early warning from our partners. The main target was energy infrastructure, specifically CHPP-4. Unfortunately, it was hit. A residential building was also damaged, and rescuers are currently putting out a fire there. Our systems detected these missiles only when they were already virtually on approach to Kyiv. CHPP-4 is one of Kyiv’s key energy facilities.
According to our intelligence, the Russians are preparing further ballistic missile launches. The facts show that the Russians do not consider themselves bound by what the President of the United States said. Ukraine supported an energy ceasefire. Russia is targeting yet another power plant and the lives of our people.
And this is absolutely unjust: when they are destroying our energy infrastructure, and Ukraine is not even receiving early warnings about ballistic missile launches. It is important that the world does not stay silent about this. And it is important that the United States really see what is happening and who is responsible for this war continuing.
Please stay safe tonight and tomorrow. We are working to replenish our air defenses with anti-ballistic missiles.
