Hacker News: grujicd

New comment by grujicd in "Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels"

grujicd — Sun, 10 May 2026 17:30:20 +0000

Hah, since 3 days ago it's now free registrations even for companies. [1] I strongly suspect that problems with SmartScreen are a not so subtle way to push us to the Store. Good thing is you don't have to use their ecommerce and pay anything per license. But I don't know whether we can just put trial there and keep existing trial and licensing logic on our own? For me the problem would also be automatic updates, as I don't want all users of v5 to be automatically upgraded to v6. Perhaps separate listings for major versions are the way to go, at least in my case. Since it's now a free registration I just might try it, sometimes it's faster to do it than to go through documentation to find out whether it's possible or not.

[1] https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2026/05/07/publis...

New comment by grujicd in "Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels"

grujicd — Sun, 10 May 2026 13:34:24 +0000

It's much more expensive on Windows side of things. DigiCert and Sectigo are now in the $700--$1000 range per year for regular OV code signing certificate.

Microsoft has it's own Azure Artifact Signing which is comparable to Apple yearly cost (give or take), but since a month ago installers signed with it often display SmartScreen warnings [1]. Even though Microsoft controls both pieces!

Store option is not free for organizations (although it's a one-time setup fee), but the worse thing is it forces you to its simplified licensing/trial model, typically not compatible with B2B software where paid upgrades, yearly support contracts, controlled updates, extended trials are used.

[1] https://github.com/Azure/artifact-signing-action/issues/128#...

New comment by grujicd in "Paying for Azure Trusted Signing, yet installers get blocked on Windows"

grujicd — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 11:13:11 +0000

For a few weeks now, many Windows apps signed with Azure Trusted Signing (a paid service) have started showing a "Windows protected your PC" warning, prompting users to click "more info" to proceed. It started badly, with new builds affected by SmartScreen. At least the releases made a few days before worked. Then it got worse, and now it seems all installers ever signed with ATS are affected. And we switched from 3rd party CA to Azure to avoid exactly this kind of problem. Needless to say, the reputation of many vendors is negatively affected.

Paying for Azure Trusted Signing, yet installers get blocked on Windows

grujicd — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 11:13:11 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/Azure/artifact-signing-action/issues/128

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47932862

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by grujicd in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

grujicd — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 12:06:01 +0000

The right answer is that these things don't really show up that much. Like I encounter something like that once in a year? Yes, it's infuriating that they show up during install, or while you're downloading Chrome from the Edge, but apart from that, none of these show up on a regular basis. Or perhaps you're a casual user, agree to one thing here, don't disable another thing there, then yes, you'll get some of those. But that's not reality for any semi-experienced user. I mean it was perfectly normal to install replacement for start menu when it was bad at one point and that's it, you're good to go, and you'll use it for years the way you want. We're not masochists.

I guess many of these are fuel for enragement posts (and deservely so), but it's not a reality of how we use Windows.

New comment by grujicd in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

grujicd — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 22:47:20 +0000

Sure, but using modifier keys. What if I want to add shift to the mix to select, let's say to the beginning of line or document? You'll need to press two modifiers. That's not optimal. And I use these all the time while editing.

And I don't consider this a MacBook flaw particularly, it's more or less general laptop flaw nowadays. If anything, other manufacturers have even more imagination to mess up keyboard layout.

New comment by grujicd in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

grujicd — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 21:55:05 +0000

On the other, as a Windows desktop person I can't live without Home/End/PgUp/Pgdown, and in different combinations with Shift/Control. That's one of reason I can't fully enjoy MacBook, not to mention the incredible fact that it doesn't have a Delete key. No, it's not the same that you can use modifier key with backspace, modifier keys are used for extra functionality, i.e. to delete to begining or end of the word, etc.

New comment by grujicd in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

grujicd — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:45:56 +0000

You can't abandon Windows because of software X, Y, Z. Over the years vendors move to multiplatform as more and more customers ask for it. These changes are slow but steady. And one day you find out that the last "must have" software is not limited to Windows anymore. That's when the dam breaks.

New comment by grujicd in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

grujicd — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:32:39 +0000

No, it was not real Visual Studio on MacOS, it was rebranded Xamarin IDE.

New comment by grujicd in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

grujicd — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:30:41 +0000

The only negative side of Total Commander is I'm extremly used to it - been using it since mid 90s. When I compare alternatives on Mac I'm searching for exact keyboard commands, navigation patterns, etc. I'm using Crax Commander, but it's not the same.

TC is probably one of the reasons I don't care that much about problems in newer versions of Windows, I don't use Explorer, I don't use windows search, text is viewed with Lister and not Notepad...

New comment by grujicd in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

grujicd — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:17:26 +0000

That "significant danger" was a bit of dramatization on my part. I don't expect anything to significantly change in the short term. I was more referring to long-term tidal-like change, which would be very hard to stop once momentum builds up.

New comment by grujicd in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

grujicd — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:11:08 +0000

I'm using Raycast on Mac, it has a bunch of stuff included but I use it only for its Clipboard History extension.

New comment by grujicd in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

grujicd — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 16:59:58 +0000

Recently I'm finding MSN home opened in Chrome over night. Aparently it's connected to some "active probing" feature, and I do have scheduled nightly restarts in the home router. But come on... No one could convince me it's not intended to inflate MSN numbers.

New comment by grujicd in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"

grujicd — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:41:07 +0000

This "make Windows better" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services.

It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how enterprises ended up on Azure and are bringing big money.

I'm still a Windows power user, MacBook is a wonderful piece of hardware and I'm typing this on one, but I'm not nearly as productive as on multimonitor PC with TotalCommander and Visual Studio where I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.

New comment by grujicd in "21,864 Yugoslavian .yu domains"

grujicd — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 10:37:23 +0000

Core of Yugoslavia, still lives on in cultural space, where music, movies, and literature are consumed in all ex republics. Except probably Kosovo, which was not part of serbo-croatian linguistic space. But even in Slovenia and Macedonia there's a significant part of population which at least understands common language. And it's not only about language, there's lot of shared mentality and history from Yugoslav period.

New comment by grujicd in "Man pleads guilty to $8M AI-generated music scheme"

grujicd — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 08:44:24 +0000

This kind of fraud would be impossible if revenue from each subscriber is distributed just to the artists they listened to. Bots listening to thousands of songs would not make a difference in this model. And I would be much happier if my money went to struggling artists I like and support, rather than to the global top 10, of whom I never played a single song.

I don't have data, but my gut feeling is that it would make a significant difference to niche artists with small but loyal listeners.

New comment by grujicd in "Our commitment to Windows quality"

grujicd — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:47:40 +0000

Let's start with those who thought it's a good idea to give power over UI decissions to designers using Macs.

New comment by grujicd in "How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?"

grujicd — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 11:57:55 +0000

I'm still using subversion as it servers solo developer needs perfectly.

New comment by grujicd in "Shallow water is dangerous too"

grujicd — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 23:30:50 +0000

I almost drowned as a kid - in shallow water, and with a swim ring around my waist. I'll explain situation here as a cautionary tale for parents.

That swim ring was a bit loose. I was standing in the water, probably jumping up and down like kids do. Somehow, I lost balance and as my upper body fell to the side the swim ring moved from my waist toward feet. It stayed there and pulled my feet upward while my head went below the water. I was powerless to return to the surface as feet were stuck in that floating ring, forcing me upside down. Fortunately, a family friend noticed the situation and pulled me from the water. Near-death situation, and it looked perfectly safe.

New comment by grujicd in "Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025"

grujicd — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 17:32:15 +0000

I believe parent was talking about translated book, not about the comment.