October 2026

From Derek Thompson11 It’s just an opening paragraph to a post with a link to his podcast, so you might not want to follow the link – there’s nothing more to read.:#

As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan once said, every technology is both an “extension” and an “amputation.” A machine that extends human intelligence is also a machine that cuts off the need for humans to be intelligent. When in possession of a tool that can reduce struggle and friction, we have to ask ourselves: What is the value of friction? When is the struggle a problem, and when is the struggle the point?#

The clocks went back last night in the UK, meaning we got an hour of extra sleep (and the we’ve stolen some light from the evenings for the mornings).#

Despite getting a good sleep I woke up tired and have remained so throughout today.#

I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep for the past ninety minutes listening to the FM radio. Yes, FM radio! Outside of my car, where I very occasionally listen to the radio, I can’t remember the last time I listened to radio over the airwaves. But I have a radio alarm clock and decided to use its musical function today, tuning in to BBC Radio 3 – which is nearly all classical music.#

I really like the idea and image of listening to the radio on a rainy Sunday afternoon.11 Though it’s just windy today – not rainy. Especially when paired with an armchair, reading and the occasional snooze. To me, it screams of a bygone, classy era. So it was rather pleasant.#

I listened to an episode of Private Passions with Eric Idle. He essentially talks about his favourite classical pieces and then you get to hear them.#

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The problem#

I was looking at disk usage on my Mac mini and found a folder I'd never seen before, taking up 20.1 GB:#

/private/var/folders/v4/pzblyf9j6rsbjb4ngnjc6nrm0000gn/X/com.google.Chrome.code_sign_clone

It held nine folders of about 2.2 GB each. Every one contained a single item, Google Chrome.app.bundle, also 2.2 GB. So I had nine complete copies of Chrome sitting in a temp directory.#

I looked into it.#

The v4/pzblyf… part of the path is random and will be different on your Mac. The X/com.google.Chrome.code_sign_clone part is the bit to look for.#

What it is#

It's a safety mechanism Chrome has used on macOS since roughly Chrome 125 (2024).#

Chrome updates itself in the background while it's still running. macOS checks a running app's code signature against the files on disk. If an update swaps those files mid-session, the running browser can fail those checks, and helper processes, keychain access and similar things start breaking.#

To avoid that, Chrome makes a snapshot of its own app bundle every time it launches and runs from it. That gives the running copy a stable version to be checked against, whatever the updater does to /Applications/Google Chrome.app.#

Why there were nine of them#

Chrome is supposed to delete its clone when it quits. If Chrome crashes, gets force-quit, or is killed during a restart or shutdown, the clone gets left behind. Nine folders meant nine sessions that didn't end cleanly.#

Other people have hit this too, including one report of a 30 GB folder. It's worst for automation and testing tools that launch Chrome over and over, and some of those tools now switch the feature off.#

It might not really be 20 GB#

The clones are made with APFS clonefile, which shares disk blocks with the original. A clone of the Chrome version you're running now takes almost no real space, even though Finder and du report the full 2.2 GB. So it's technically not using 20 GB. But it's still using over 2 GB – an not ideal!#

Clones of older versions that have since been updated away do hold onto real space. So deleting them frees a real amount, but possibly less than the headline number. To see the actual figure, compare df -h / before and after.#

The fix#

1. Quit Chrome properly with ⌘Q. Closing the window isn't enough.#

2. Check that nothing is still running:

   pgrep -l "Google Chrome"
   

   This should print nothing.#

3. Delete the folder. It belongs to your user, so you don't need sudo:

   rm -rf /private/var/folders/*/*/X/com.google.Chrome.code_sign_clone
   ```<!--#mcvn-->
   
   

The wildcards mean you don't need to look up the random part of the path.#

Don't do this while Chrome is open. The current session's clone is in use, and deleting it can break the running browser. Chrome creates a fresh folder the next time it starts. That's expected, and one folder while Chrome is running is normal.#

Stopping it piling up again#

I've set up a Hazel rule so I don't have to remember to do this.#

• Watched folder: the com.google.Chrome.code_sign_clone folder. To reach it in the folder picker, press ⌘⇧G and paste the path.#
• Conditions:
  • Kind is Folder
  • Passes shell script (embedded script):

    ! pgrep -x "Google Chrome" >/dev/null
    ```<!--#4z14-->
    

• Action: Move to Trash#

The shell-script condition means Hazel only clears clones when Chrome isn't running, so it never touches one that's in use.#

You can also launch Chrome with --disable-features=MacAppCodeSignClone to switch the mechanism off. I wouldn't for everyday browsing, because it brings back the mid-update breakage the feature exists to prevent.#

Quick reference for next time#

# How big is it?
du -sh /private/var/folders/*/*/X/com.google.Chrome.code_sign_clone

# Quit Chrome (⌘Q), make sure it's gone…
pgrep -l "Google Chrome"

# …then clear it out
rm -rf /private/var/folders/*/*/X/com.google.Chrome.code_sign_clone

The same thing can happen with other Chromium-based apps, such as Chromium itself and some Electron apps. Look for <app id>.code_sign_clone folders in the same X directory.#

Further reading#

• Chromium source: code_sign_clone_manager#
• ferrum issue #500: Chromium on Mac using disk space#

In this video (Xwitter link) Todoist founder Amir Salihefendić shows that projects in Todoist can soon have their own icon.#

I currently do this manually, by just putting an emoji at the start of the name of my projects.11 For example: 🔁 Recurring. Support for icons/emojis is long overdue, so I'm glad it should be appearing soon.#

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I just watched a TikTok about a soldier from WW1 called Thomas Morley. I thought it interesting that he had a notebook called 'The Soldiers Own Diary'. So as someone with a burgeoning interest in notebooks, I thought I’d look into it.#

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It is a small brown cloth book with a bugler stamped in silver on the cover, and Charles Letts & Co. of London sold it to the public. The army did not issue it. In 1918 a cloth copy with a pencil cost one shilling, and a soldier could buy one at a YMCA institute in camp or from a stationer at home.#

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A gunner from the 19th Company, Royal Garrison Artillery, compiled the 1918 edition. It carried useful information for a man at the front and maps of the European war areas on the endpapers, and earlier editions also printed bugle calls and knots.#

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War Time Canada has some great PDF scans of soldiers notebooks.#

Plenty of soldiers just used whatever notebook they could get their hands on. One used a Gordon’s Gin one (PDF). There’s a sad contrast, seeing colourful adverts for gin drinks and recipes in the front pages and entries of war in the other pages.#

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A William Simpson didn’t write much in his notebook, choosing instead to place leaves and butterfly’s in the pages:#

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Soldiers from across the British Empire carried notebooks, and charities such as the Australian Comforts Fund gave a version away. I’m sure many owners wrote only a few lines or left the pages empty, too preoccupied with simply surviving.11 And I’d imagine in a cold, wet trench and being endlessly shelled it’s very difficult to find the energy and motivation to write in your notebook. Not to mention how depressing a lot of your entries would be. I’m not in a war, and I find that far too many of my entries are negative in nature (but maybe that’s just my personality).#

Thomas Morley wrote in his though. On Friday 26 April 1918 he put down in pencil, "Over the top for the first time, 6 am."#

According to the video, his battalion made a major attack that day and a shell wounded his best friend. His friend died the next day, aged 19.#

The place names beside the entry are faint, but they appear to read Villers-Bretonneux, and the second battle for that village ran from 24 to 27 April 1918, which fits the date.#

Morley survived the war. He became a railway worker, married a Hilda Frankland in 1925, and had three children. He died on 11 September 1977, more than 59 years after that morning when he first went over the top.#

I’ve been using the to-do software Todoist for a while now.11 Though not as long as I thought. It was created in 2007, and I didn’t start using it until 2018 – about eight years ago. And whilst my usage of it has waxed and waned down the years, I’ve still used it a lot. With 18,610 completed tasks, I knew I was a pretty heavy user of it, but I didn’t realise how much. I have over 50,000 “karma” points, which apparently puts me in the top 0.05% of Todoist users!#

With 54869 Karma points, you're Enlightened and rank in the top 0.05% of all Todoist users.#

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One thing I’ll often defend when people moan about them is cheap flights – mainly to Europe.#

They complain about the upsell, about the unreliability, about the airport experience. But modern airline travel is miraculous. Especially for the price.#

When my Dad was a child, Europe wasn’t really a travel destination.11 He went to Sweden with the school via bus – but that was all. And for my Grandparents, it certainly wasn’t an option. For them, a caravan holiday or a day out to Margate or Brighton was their big annual holiday. But thanks to the rise of cheap airlines, my Dad goes to Europe several times via £50-£100 flights.#

So when I hear someone complaining about a RyanAir flight being delayed by an hour, I want to shake them and shout “do you know how lucky you are‽”22 Also, as Del-boy might say: “well what do you expect for £50?” If you’re that sensitive to these things, give Qatar or Singapore Airways £500 and I’m sure they’ll likely get you their on time, without the upselling. You get what you pay for.#

Anyway, it’s similar for shopping deliveries. Amazon has got this down to an art form.33 Which is amazing considering how little they pay their workers. Amazon is a good example of a company spending money on expensive technology where it matters (such as warehouse robots). And being cheap where it doesn’t matter (such as using banged up Ford Transit vans, and not charging their workers (I really wish that last one did matter)). But even other companies are catching up. For years I would use Amazon for three reasons:#

1. It was cheap.#
2. I didn’t have to sign up for another account on some random shopping website.#
3. It would be delivered next day.#

But whilst other companies aren’t always as cheap as Amazon,44 Though they can be cheaper that you’d expect. Amazon is no longer always the cheapest around. I’ve finally truly understood Amazon’s plan: be the cheapest around and take the financial losses. Then when they’re the only game left in town, jack up the prices. It’s the classic Venture Capital play.55 You can see it in effect with Uber, which is now often pricier than a traditional cab. When I was earning less I struggled to adopt the moral position and not use Amazon. But I can increasingly avoid them now – and I do. And now that shopping sites increasingly offer Single Sign-On (SSO) via your Apple or Google account, or Shopify, I now longer need to create an account. So that’s point two taken care of.#

Point 3 (next day delivery) is still the biggest reason I use Amazon. Mainly because they don’t charge for it, whereas lots of sites require you to spend £50-£200 to get free next day delivery. I get it, Amazon has its own infrastructure network. Whereas others have to rely on Evri, Royal Mail, DPD, DHL or UPS.66 Many companies use Evri, as they’re cheap, but awful. Formerly known as Yodel, until they got such a bad reputation they had to rebrand. But Evri quickly got a bad reputation too (a bad business is still a bad business) But plenty of times I’ve put items in my basket, was ready to buy, but backed off when I realised my £25 order was going to become £35 with delivery.#

However, some times I’ll pay the cost of shipping. And with my Paper Republic order I was even willing to pay £18(!) for the "express delivery", so my new notebook is delivered in time for my trip to Cambridge.#

And just like with airline travel, airline deliveries – and delivery systems in general – amaze me.77 I know the Royal Mail isn’t what it once was. During the peak of letter sending I believe you could get a letter sent from one side of London to another within an hour or two. And a postman would deliver to you up to six times a day. UPS picked up my order at 21:00 last night in Austria. Two hours later it was in Koeln, Germany. And at 06:32 this morning it was in the back of a van and on its way to me. It may have cost me £18, but it’s still miraculous.#

I recently tried out upgrading from the Claude “Pro” plan (£20/mo) to the “Max” one (£90/mo).#

But I haven’t really noticed any benefits. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great. But so is the Pro plan – it was rare for me to hit usage limits. So with Max I haven’t once got close to hitting its usage limits. So it’s a bit of a waste of money I think, and I’m going to downgrade.#

I love blocking people. I've been on the internet long enough now to learn that it's best not to get riled up. Just ignore, block and move on.#

But it means that on most platforms I have a long list of people I've blocked. And it's not an uncommon occurrence for me to randomly visit a Xwitter profile of someone that's been linked to from a website, only to discover that I've blocked them. 95% of the time I can't remember why either.#

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Audio upload test – please ignore.#

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Just a test. Please ignore.#

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My Instagram is actually a positive place. It shows me great stuff that’s right up my street.#

However, because of the limitlessness of “the feed” and my dopamine chasing brain I barely register photos/videos. My brain just says “that’s good, but you’ve looked at it for 200 ms, time to try the next thing”.#

So I’d love a social network which slows you down – forces you to look at a photo for something like 5 seconds or so.11 Which is still a short time.#

I'm listening to a "podcast" (MP3 file)11 Backup link here. of Dave Winer giving "a tutorial on the meaning of the at-sign in Twitter" (Xwitter). It was recorded on December 31, 2007. And it's interesting that the word "tweet" doesn't seem to have been invented at that point yet. He calls them "twits" or "posts".#

I saw some videos on TikTok today of people smugly saying "Xwitter/TikTok sure is quiet since a Ukrainian drone blew up a Russian data center that runs disinformation bots". And they showed this chart/tweet:#

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And I thought it odd that a few drones could do such a thing. Mainly from a tech perspective. If all these bots are based in one data centre, surely it would be very easy for social media networks to block them?#

Also, enough time hadn't passed for a person to actually notice a decline in misinformation or far-right comments.#

Well, it looks like it was all nonsense. PixelEnvy has a good summary.#

Yandex – Russia's Google – has had its servers blown up by Ukrainian drones and a lot of its "bots" are offline. But these are just search engine web crawlers. They're not bots that comment on social media. And I think that's where people have got confused, or jumped on this false narrative.#

Actual Russian bot activity appears to be the same as usual according to Cloudflare11 Cloudflare was the "source" a lot of people were using to show that Russian disinformation bots were offline.:#

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(Found via @antibot4navalny.bsky.social on BlueSky)#

It's ironic that we've got misinformation about disinformation.#

I've been a paying user of the RSS feed reader service NewsBlur for 11 years11 I used the free plan at first. First signing up on January 25, 2013. and it's done its job well.#

And whilst it has some nifty features I'm sure,22 I noticed quite a few new ones when I checked last week. Mainly AI-based stuff. I've always just used it for syncing the read/unread status of my feed subscriptions so NetNewsWire is in sync on my Mac and iPhone.#

Each year when it was due for renewal I'd look at its competitors and they were always similarly priced. And then I'd look at the self-hosted options, which there were always quite a few. But they were either not supported by NetNewsWire or looked like a faff to install and maintain. So I just let NewsBlur renew.#

But this year AI is a powerful tool. So when I noticed NetNewsWire supports the self-hosted FreshRSS I just asked Claude Code to install it on my Linode VPS. Forty minutes later it was up and running.33 I went overkill and used Claude Fable 5.1 on the task. Forty minutes is a long time. But it did a bunch of tests and it went away and even freed up storage on my Linode VPS.#

I'm happier self-hosting an RSS syncing service than most other things because it's so easy to backup. I just need to export the OPML file and I can easily move to another platform if FreshRSS doesn't work out.#

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I feel a bit bad for leaving NewsBlur. It's just run by a guy and his dog. And for years he would try and convince you to sign up to the premium plan by saying that it would "feed his dog" Shiloh. It was cute. Sadly it looks like Shiloh has died.44 And it looks like he has a new dog now, called Lyric. But I like to think he got his money's worth out of me.55 It started at $24/yr in 2015. Now it looks like it's $36/yr. And who knows, maybe I'll be back when my Linode server blows up (I hope not – it's the same server that powers this blog).#

I’ve never thought I’d do well in an eating contest. But now that I think about it, I’d dominate a crisp eating contest for sure.11 Not sure if such a thing exists. I hope not, for my health.#

“He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with. They gave a man self-respect. Not ostentation but quality, and the love that cherished the quality. Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that. And wasn't that worth something?"#

– from "The Talented Mr. Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith#

Yesterday I picked up a A5 sized 2027 diary from Fortnum & Mason.11 For those who don’t know, Fortnum & Mason is a very high end department store in Piccadilly, London. It’s known for the blue colour used on most of its products (see photo of notebook below), its Christmas hampers which come in a wicker box, and for generally being a British shopping institution. And I have to say, that despite the high cost, it’s a lot better than the little Hatchards one I got. If only because it understands it’s a British institution and has British dates and information in it – not American like the Hatchards one!#

As someone who’s only really bought notebooks, not diaries before, I wish all notebooks had useful information and references at the start of it.#

Here’s the cover:#

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Apparently 2027 is going to be the year of the goat. In the front of the notebook they say there’s a goat on the cover as they have a copper still for making gin called `Amalthea’, which “shares its title with a mythical goat.” But I reckon it’s surely because it’s year of the goat. F&M has a decent amount of wealthy Chinese shoppers.22 The Chinese man in front of me had a trolley of goods. Do you know how rich you have to be to use a trolley at F&M?! For reference, the notebook I bought was £85. A pen I got was £38. It is all insanely pricey. So fill up a trolley it going to cost a fortune. So I’m sure “pandering” to that crowd is happy to see a goat on the cover.#

Here’s what the Fortnum & Mason one has:#

Important British dates#

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Food festivals and game seasons#

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So many I didn’t know about that I can’t wait to celebrate! Like pie week, British beef week, whisky day, sandwich week, biscuit day, picnic day, cream tea day, British food fortnight,33 Will need to look into this one. Not sure what it is exactly. vegan month,44 I think it’s a great idea, trying to be vegan for a month. And November is a great month. Just before Christmas, when meat can be back on the menu, boys. and stir up Sunday,55 Another one to look into..#

Time differences#

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I find it funny than everything in the list is cities. Aside from little Malta, where it just lists the country, rather than their capital city of Valletta. My girlfriends heritage is Maltese, so she’ll find that fun too.#

International dialling codes#

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A bit of a dated edition in 2027. But I almost like that.#

Metric information#

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Just generally useful.#

Wedding anniversaries#

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I didn’t realise that you’re meant to gift stuff like paper, cotton, leather and fruit in the early years. I just knew of golden, diamond and platinum. How cute.#

Wine vintage chart#

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Some of these pages show the type of clientele a F&M diary is for.66 Posh people. This is one for sure, along with the game season section.#

Year planner#

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I’m not really sure how this page is useful, as there’s very little room next to each date. Maybe you should utilise symbols? Such as to show that you’re on annual leave from work perhaps?#

The end of December 2026#

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I like how it includes the last two weeks of the previous year (2026). A lot of people will be getting this diary as a Christmas present, so it means they can start using it right away.#

I could write a long post about how wonderful the note-taking software Obsidian is.11 And maybe one day I will#

For the first time ever today I launched the iPhone app and it didn’t load.22 It just displayed the app icon in the centre of the screen and my notes didn’t load. I was shocked. Obsidian always works. It’s one of the few apps I can use without signal on the Underground and it behaves just the same as when I’ve got WiFi.33 Seriously, I love that Obsidian doesn’t give a damn if you’re connected or not. It doesn’t even tell me I’m offline. It just shows all my notes, which are downloaded locally to my phone, and then when I come back online it gracefully syncs them. It’s never ever crashed. Ever.#

And it made me realise how great it is. Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s great. But I don't appreciate it enough. It’s truly a tremendous bit of software. Aside from my to-dos,44 Which are done via Todoist and notebooks. it powers my entire personal and work life. And it does it so reliably that when it doesn’t work just one time, I’m shocked.#

So thank you Obsidian.#

The word 'software' is dead.11 Or at best it’s dying. And 'app' killed it.#

'Software' is now a fusty word, associated with dial-up, the family computer, and when software came on hardware (CDs).#

It wouldn’t surprise me if the Associated Press’s style guide now tells journalists that everything is either a ‘website' or an 'app'.#

I work in tech and I can’t remember the last time I heard the word 'software'. We build 'apps' and 'tools' now.#

I posted before that this blog is still not that pretty. Mainly because I was trying to not fiddle with the design too much, as it’s a time sink hole for me.#

Well today I did actually tidy up the looks slightly. Nothing crazy. Just a bit more padding here. A changed font size there.#

But the biggest change is a custom font. I was using Georgia and Helvetica11 Or Arial on Windows. before. And I really wanted to avoid custom fonts simply because it slows down the site as the fonts have to be downloaded. But I just love typography too much.#

I’m using Heliotrope. I kind of forgot I had a licence for it to be honest, until I happily found it in my /fonts folder on my Mac.#

As the description of it says, it’s “nei­ther sans nor serif”. It’s a very interesting font. I often struggle to choose between serif and sans-serif fonts. I love the beauty of the former. But struggle to resist the cleanness of the later. Heliotrope is a great middle ground.#

Here’s the blog on an iPhone 15:#

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But I have to say, I think the blog looks at its best in dark mode:#

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