Hacker News: arrozconcosas

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services"

arrozconcosas — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 19:27:55 +0000

It can also be a way for the public to force the government to perform better, thus lowering the cost of services. For example, the school district in my city is going through a financial crisis of its own making. The public is the only thing holding the district and board of the district accountable, to prevent them from wasting money and creating legal liabilities. AI has been instrumental in allowing the public to better understand the technical financial documents and situations the district is in.

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services"

arrozconcosas — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 19:23:38 +0000

Treating this as a problem to solve seems like an odd reaction. The public being able to better represent themselves, by making previously difficult content or access paths easier to navigate is a win for the public and therefore a win for the people. Of course, the government may prefer that the public not be able to speak up for itself. This is healthy tension. Honestly, the average person in the public is currently underserved relative to paid lobbyists, resourced activists, lawyers, etc. that know how to engage with the political system in more productive ways.

Show HN: Banana Battle – DOS Gorillas rebuilt as a web game

arrozconcosas — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 06:14:48 +0000

As a kid, I loved to play the DOS Gorillas game where you would throw bananas at your opponent, smashing cities as you go.

I wanted to play it, so I rebuilt the classic QBasic/DOS "Gorillas" game from scratch as a mobile web app. It is playable in the browser and installable to your iPhone home screen.

It's all vanilla HTML/Canvas/JavaScript. No frameworks, no build step, no dependencies, no tracking. A single static page served from GitHub Pages.

A few bits that were fun to build: - Destructible terrain: buildings are painted to an offscreen canvas and explosions erase pixels - Ballistic physics with wind, sub-stepped so a fast banana can't tunnel through a thin building between frames. - Native share sheet (Web Share API) so you can text a friend your result with a "beat my score" challenge link

It's hot-seat two-player (pass the phone, or share a keyboard: arrows to aim, space to throw).

No original Microsoft code or assets — the code and pixel art are all my own (with some help from Claude :) ).

Feedback welcome!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48856350

Points: 2

# Comments: 3

New comment by arrozconcosas in "In the age of algorithms and AI, is traditional media democracy's defence?"

arrozconcosas — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:57:39 +0000

The press should be strong and independent. Subsidies undermines independence.

New comment by arrozconcosas in "“Nothing” is the secret to structuring your work"

arrozconcosas — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 14:30:32 +0000

This sounds like the 5S framework from Toyota, where people keep areas, neat, clean, and organized as a work principal.

The 5S acronym is:

Sort (remove what you don’t need)

Set in Order (organize what remains so it’s easy to find/use)

Shine (clean the area regularly)

Standardize (create consistent rules/checklists)

Sustain (maintain the discipline long-term)

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Your app subscription is now my weekend project"

arrozconcosas — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:14:19 +0000

Somewhere along the line software went from being $99 for life to $9.99/month for life. The net result is massive inflation. I dusted off an old video game system recently and the game still played, through the end, for just the cost of electricity. I realize that maintenance is important and should be paid for, but let's be honest maintenance is a small sliver of your monthly subscription cost.

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences"

arrozconcosas — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:07:37 +0000

Thank you for offering an objective analysis of the story. Too many people go to it with pre-conceived bias against this particular carmaker. If you replaced it with 'Ford' the article would never have been published.

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Proton spam and the AI consent problem"

arrozconcosas — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:05:11 +0000

How can you get a machine to have values? Humans have values because of social dynamics and education (or lack of exposure to other types of education). Computers do not have social dynamics, and it is much harder to control what they are being educated on if the answer is "everything".

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Proton spam and the AI consent problem"

arrozconcosas — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:03:05 +0000

Imagine making this argument for other technologies. There is no opt-out button for machine learning, choosing the power source for their datacenters, the coding language in their software, etc. Conceptually there is a difference between opting out of an interaction with another party vs opting out of a specific part of their technology stack.

New comment by arrozconcosas in "AI is a horse (2024)"

arrozconcosas — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 14:57:04 +0000

Not sure how this fits in the analogy, but as a cyclist I would add some people get more exercise by having an electric bicycle. It makes exercise available to more people.

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids"

arrozconcosas — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 15:15:22 +0000

I tried to look for a 'dumb' tv for a long time to get to a setup like this. The ultimate setup would be 1) a totally dumb and stupid tv + 2) a streaming box like Apple TV or whatever. I just want the audio/visual aspect of the screen, nothing else.

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban"

arrozconcosas — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 15:06:14 +0000

Funny enough, adults are also prone to bullying in large groups online. This does not go away later in life.

New comment by arrozconcosas in "GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT"

arrozconcosas — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 15:19:02 +0000

Me: Is there a seahorse emoji?

5.1: Yes. It is ⬛ (the seahorse emoji).

New comment by arrozconcosas in "iOS 26.2 to allow third-party app stores in Japan ahead of regulatory deadline"

arrozconcosas — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 14:01:53 +0000

There are end user benefits to apples approach too, due to better governance and control over what apps are available. Governments also have incentive to maximize their power and are not benevolent actors in this scheme.

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Tesla's ‘Robotaxis' Keep Crashing—Even With Human ‘Safety Monitors' Onboard"

arrozconcosas — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 15:30:41 +0000

This really depends on the definition of a 'crash'. For example, fatal accident > insurance claim > minor incident.

If we use insurance claim as the definition then: - The average driver files an insurance claim for a car crash about once every 17.9 years [1] - The average driver drives 13,476 miles per year [2] - This means one insurance claim per 241,220 miles driven by a human driver.

1. https://www.gtslawfirm.com/what-are-the-chances-of-getting-i... 2. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Tesla Recalls Almost 13,000 EVs over Risk of Battery Power Loss"

arrozconcosas — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 13:40:06 +0000

According to the NHTSA, Ford has had 126 recalls this year and the next most is Chrysler with 40. Tesla has 9. https://datahub.transportation.gov/stories/s/NHTSA-Recalls-b...

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Public trust demands open-source voting systems"

arrozconcosas — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 17:07:22 +0000

Mail in ballots are even less secure

New comment by arrozconcosas in "Public trust demands open-source voting systems"

arrozconcosas — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 17:06:00 +0000

There is too much power at stake and too many dollars in the mix for this to work. Take a look at how expensive it is to break electronic voting machines then compare that to the billions of dollars that flow into an election cycle.

New comment by arrozconcosas in "How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods"

arrozconcosas — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 17:56:04 +0000

If you make a system that has 1,000 nudges towards Fruit Loops and hides the healthy thing, then it isn't just an individual choice. Nudges include advertising, availability, addictive ingredients, misleading marketing claims, food engineering, etc. I recommend reading this to get an understanding of how much effort goes into making people make the wrong choices: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinar...

New comment by arrozconcosas in "How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods"

arrozconcosas — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 17:52:54 +0000

Many times the ultra processed crap is more expensive. Don't forget "convenient to buy" in addition to "convenient to cook". For example, a cliff bar bought from a corner store could be $3, and is basically a candy bar. A company I like is called Farmer's Fridge, and they basically have vending machines in convenient places with fresh made healthy foods like salads.