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Comment by kentonv | Hacker News Reader

Oh hello! This is my house! Thanks for posting!

Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42156977

Unfortunately this new thread was posted while I was asleep, and so I haven't been online to answer questions as the thread developed. Whereas in the previous thread I participated from the start.

Pro tip to anyone whose stuff gets posted on HN: It is a completely different place when the author is present.

If you're present, then the people who are inclined to post cheap criticisms shy away, and the people who want to ask questions and learn show up.

(Aside from the house, I've had my work at Cloudflare posted many times, and seen this pattern in those posts.)

View on HN

I can tell the world is getting squeezed. This has been posted to HN several times in the past 20 years, and it usually receives a great reception because of the hacker ethos involved, the love of lan parties, and the success in tech. It's just cool as hell.

This is the first time it's been posted where most of the comments appear to be resentment that you could afford to do the project at all. Money isn't the point: some people have it and some people don't, and that can change over time. What's interesting is how you use the money. And in this case, designing a living space around hosting lan parties is a really interesting hack! I like the fold-away keyboard monitor setups especially.

You didn't have to write about any of it, and yet you did, and you keep the post up, and it continues to be something interesting to discuss. So thank you!

I feel bad. I posted a negative comment (under a different user name) one of the other times this was posted. I was in a bad spot in my life - still am, but I'm getting better.

Your only human (i think), it happens to all of us at least some of the time. If your willing to acknowledge and admit it then your already doing better than most. In addition to giving yourself a break we should all try to give others a break because you never really know what a stranger could be dealing with.

> This is the first time it's been posted where most of the comments appear to be resentment that you could afford to do the project at all.

Despite the negativity, I'm glad that we can at least talk about the topic of wealth and privilege on HN now, rather than comments pointing it out being flag/voted down into oblivion. I don't harbor any resentment about OP's home/project, but I can totally understand the resentment from others, especially in these times, and it at the very least deserves to be mentioned.

By contrast, I think that every post on HN doesn't need a bucket full of crabs complaining that they can't do the same thing. It's not intellectually stimulating.

You don't think questions of how we design our societies, who gets to benefit from it, how power is distributed, of systems design and how we relate to each other socially are intellectually stimulating?

May I suggest the problem is not with the questions then?

I don't see any of those discussions. I see people complaining that Kenton is "privileged", that him enjoying himself his somehow harmful, that his house is too big, and implying that all is a problem; with little to no specifics on how or why.

You're completely welcome to make a post that raises those questions, but I think its irrelevant here. I don't think its productive for every fun project posted to have an inquisition in the comments on whether or not the project deserves to exist.

> May I suggest the problem is not with the questions then?

It's against the guidelines to make swipes like this.

Fair point on the swipe, apologies there.

I find it frustrating that people cannot have a conversation about what enables a project to exist without people going shhh just look at the shinies.

To me, it is a very surface level uncritical attitude directly counter to the hacker ethos of looking at how systems work.

We tend to examine projects by their inputs and outputs. I don't think it's fair to exempt capital and resources, one of the key inputs, from examination.

That's not to say this isn't a cool house or the person building it did anything bad themselves, they're just an actor in the bigger incentive system.

Hey, at least _this_ post isn't full of comments complaining that it was written with AI.

HN drew me in years ago because it had a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and deeper conversations than you'd find in other places popular with tech nerds. There was an overall culture of technical optimism, which I like to sum up as:

Learn cool technology, build cool things, meet cool people.

Now, HN is one of the more pessimistic communities I frequent. Most posts are berating or belittling the author, the technology, someone's politics, other commenters, capitalism in general, and so on. It's all so tiresome to read and the amount of time and energy wasted doesn't hold a candle to whatever the AI companies are doing. It's gotten to the point that I pretty much never scroll past halfway down the comments page, because that is almost always about where the useless and most whiney comments tend to start. It used to be lower, like 10-20%. It may be creeping up even higher.

I would love to find an online community where the pessimists don't rule the roost. Haven't found it yet, but if anyone wants to drop me a hint, my contact info is in my profile.

> HN drew me in years ago because it had a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and deeper conversations than you'd find in other places popular with tech nerds. There was an overall culture of technical optimism

I feel like people are much more pessimistic towards technology in general, vs. the days you're referring to. Big Tech was still "cool" then, the wealth divide wasn't as big as it is now, social media wasn't (as) toxic, and AI wasn't actively making everything worse.

Nowadays, it's hard to be optimistic for how technology is progressing. People do hack away and share interesting, fun, and (often) useless projects, and those still draw less pessimistic discussion. But these are the exception, among other news of how technology is getting worse, or making things worse.

So I guess my point is, it not so much that HN or the community has gotten worse, but there's just less to be excited about in tech these days.

I think it's less pessimistic and more aware of its limits now and thus not as impressed

When we were all younger it seemed the sky was the limit

But we've gotten wiser and realize the ceiling with tech like iPhones and PS5

Hedonic treadmill just goes in a loop of experience. Consumer tech is just attention seeking codependency on the part of corporate

The real cool stuff going on with tech is in domains like regenerative and longevity medicine; see Michael Levin at Tufts for truly sci fi Wolverine healing type mind blowing ideas

I personally still feel like the sky could be the limit, i have so many insane scifi fantasy type ideas for the future of tech but honestly i dont really want to see any of them become a reality because i know that with our current political socioeconomic system that tech would be used to abuse a large amount of people. The way i see it society is headed towards techno feudalism and the better the tech the more difficult it will be for the serfs to escape.

Ive got so many crazy tech fantasies though, im actually afraid to describe them for fear of giving the ruling class more ideas.

> HN drew me in years ago because it had a higher signal-to-noise ratio. > Now, HN is one of the more pessimistic communities I frequent.

It doesn't mean the signal has disappeared from places like HN. It just means the noise has become much noisier, and now it's much harder to find the signal. And it's true not only for HN, but for all forums/communities I've used over the last ~15 years. Kind of a natural process, I think: more people on the internet, more people in tech -> less quality in discussions on average.

I'm still trying to find interesting discussions and useful information, but taking more conscious approach: not reading every article from frontpage or using some kind of ranking system to select content for me.

I built a small tool for this and use it myself (e.g., I found your comment using it :) ). If you're interested, you can try it: https://knoless.app

I just found HN not too long ago and i really like the insightful discussions, it reminds me of reddit before they started banning and censoring everyone for any disagreement with extreme left politics.

I remember i was banned from every single front page subreddit for asking a question about mask policy during covid. I think one week they said masks provided very little protection and they were in limited supply so individuals should stay home and save the masks for healthcare workers and then the next week they said everyone should wear a mask even if you have to reuse an old one for a week straight and even if your entirely alone. So i asked why the sudden change from one week to the next and might have said something like the previous advice made more sense to me and got banned from basically all of reddit.

And that was when i finally managed to kick my reddit addiction. So now i stumble across HN and it seems just like an early reddit except with one main community instead of a bunch of smaller ones. But i see a very similar trend already in the few months ive been lurking and the few weeks ive been commenting, ive seen what looks like political based moderation rather than conduct based.

Im all for keeping discussions civil and engaging but when you try to control which arguments are allowed to be made or block anyone from making a decent argument to favor one side over another then i lose all interest in anything discussed there because you cant have a discussion when one side cant speak. Thats why reddit is so empty today. You can have empty memes and pointless joking around but you cant talk about anything real unless your just a ranting raving lunatic because thats what you become when you dont have anyone to push back against your crazy ideas. Echo chambers are full of lunatics because echo chambers create lunatics. So if you want to keep this space full of actual discussion then dont allow it to become an echo chamber which means you have to defend the right for people you disagree with to have a voice in this space even if its just so that others can explain to them where they may have overlooked something when forming their argument.

Politically i find myself in the center because i tend to disagree with democrats about as often as i disagree with republicans but i can understand where they are coming from and often agree with the idea but i disagree with the implementation. But in my experience the only people who try to stop me from speaking are democrats. The only sites which have a censorship problem are run with a clear democrat bias. Personally id rather have a hate filled platform where people are free to discuss and associate than a locked down platform with no disagreement or hate or mean words where people arent allowed to talk freely.

I value civility but i value the freedom to discuss and thus the freedom to think about and articulate ideas far more.

> But i see a very similar trend already in the few months ive been lurking and the few weeks ive been commenting, ive seen what looks like political based moderation rather than conduct based.

Good moment to pull specifics from hn.algolia.com. In my experience on the site it has the best moderation on the internet. Not every site moderator is interviewed by the New Yorker.

>But in my experience the only people who try to stop me from speaking are democrats.

Go comment with an independent perspective under r/conservative and watch what happens.

Taken from another forum where such money is thrown around, the correct response is "congrats and fuck you". Not much point in argument beyond that.

I'm sorry so many people are hating on your house. I guess I could understand it if someone was showing off their yacht, because this isn't a boat owners forum, but a lan party house ought to be right up HN's alley. I think its awesome, and impressive yall have maintained friendships like that for so long. Some of my best memories are from the LAN parties of decades ago. Although some of the fun was in the amount of friction, like manually assigning IPs. Or when everyone got the code red worm as soon as they joined the network. Just being able to walk into something like this would literally have blown our minds back then.

If someone wants to post a lan party yacht, I’m here for that too

Hmmmmm.....

Just kidding. Gotta say I never understood the appeal of yachts. What does a yacht give you that a fancy house doesn't? It's on the water? So what? It's not like it goes fast enough to be a worthwhile form of transportation...

I do totally get private jets. They are fancy, but also get you somewhere. LAN party jet? That'd be a cool way to pass a long flight. Hey guys let's LAN party to Tokyo!

(I do not expect I'll ever have private jet money. Please don't eat me.)

You can go swimming anytime you want to. They are slow, but you get to choose when you leave and where you go.

Most yacht owners don't live on them full time. (they may have a paid crew that does) they take them for vacations. They are not really transportation even though they often will go to multiple close destinations.

I just feel like, the whole point of travelling is to experience different environments. Isn't it more fun to stay in a different fancy hotel every time, than to be in your same old yacht you've been in many times before?

I'm also confused about people who own many vacation houses. Why not just rent a different fancy house each time? Less expensive, less trouble, more variety, you can experience more places...

There are multiple ways to do things. If you are visiting a places for a short time you cannot go in depth of the full experience like you could if you stay longer - but by contrast if you spend a lot of time at one hotel you lose the ability to see all the other places you could have. There are more places to visit than I will have time to.

Staying in your own yacht means that you have all the things arranged like you like it. You can't repaint your hotel room. You can't control how firm the bed is in your hotel room. Most hotels give you a choice of pillows - but you have to do something with the ones you don't like without taking them out of your room. Your yacht/house is never booked when you want to go - which can be a big deal.

There is no reason someone with a yacht can't stay in a hotel. I suspect many with a yacht spend more nights in a hotel than all their houses/yachts combined.

At the level of wealth of owning one of these yachts, hotels will ensure they have the bed and pillows you want, and your PA will arrange it when booking the hotel.

yatch can get into international waters so anything goes? So in my mind if someone owns a yatch they are into weird an illegal stuff 99% of the time.

Like porn with midgets and donkeys?

You can have a lot of midgets on a yacht, but where would you keep the donkey?

That's what distinguishes super yachts from mere regular-sized yachts. The wide base of the hull increases stability on the water to the point that donkey husbandry becomes practical.

Or maybe it is just a legal way to escape taxes. Enough to be worth owning the yatch and paying for its crew and maintenance. Just that should give a hint to the low bar of the money amount involved.

Heh. Nothing else says, "I have so much money that I literally don't have to care about anything ever again," than spending millions on a big-ass boat to go partying on and snort everclear or whatever it is that the ultra-rich get up to these days.

It's like your own villa that can sit in any party place you like. Ibiza, French Riviera, Crete, Barcelona.

And when you get bored with Europe, you pay someone to sail it to Caribbean and can fly there to party again.

And if you're poor and only have a few million dollar yaht next to your by the river apartment, then you can at least have a party on the yacht when it's parked, cos you don't want to get caught drunk & sailing.

Not that I ever thought about what it would be like to have a yacht. But once broke onto one and me and my 2 friends had a before party on it. We didn't damage anything or litter. We just didn't have any place to stay, because the last bus to the city arrived at 19:30 and clubs didn't open until 21 and it was cold.

I've lived aboard boats for about 17 years of my life, I feel more comfortable squished into a boat then living on land, the sounds and movement are somehow reassuring. When my family moved ashore I got my first PC and I would host LAN parties, I also enjoy cooking so I would prepare a bunch of casaroles, everyone would pitch in and then skip sleep for most of a long weekend. Sometimes I see some old big boat with large generators for sale and contemplate packing a lan party on board, being out in some quiet ancorage with your friends fragging away sounds like a dream to me! I've seen your house on here a couple of times I love your setup!

How big is your boat? I assume you have to make some sacrifices respect to showers, toilet, oven, fridge, etc, but it does sound appealing to me.

Do you actually drive it around or is it permanently moored?

I've had a few over the years, currently I have a 36’ steel sailboat, it has a lot of insulation so it's cosy in the winter. I live ashore at the moment, but for 1 person 36' is too big even. I can shower with hot water (propane on demand heater and a 12v water pump), the toilet is small, I also hit the local pool from time to time for a shower. My solar + 4 golf cart lead acid batteries runs a small compressor fridge and a loptop. I sail it around the coast (bc gulf islands), but mostly its parked in its spot.

Look up gaben's yacht. Exactly that, with a dash of science on the side

I’m interested in the long DisplayPort and USB cables. I’d love to get my very loud gaming PC away from my quiet office and these would be just the trick. Thanks for making me aware that this is an option! Now I have to decide where I would want the holes in my walls. Any gotchas or are these really able to be treated as super long cables that still work?

I have a couple of 5M DisplayPort cables that I use to put my beefy work PC at one end of the room (and under a desk, between the wall on one side and stuff to the side of it on the other) while I sit at the other end of the room. I've also got a 5M USB3 active repeater with a 4-port hub for keyboard, mouse and the 2 monitors, and a game controller plugged into one of the monitors. I've been using it every working day for over 4 years now.

Very occasionally one of the monitor glitches out for about 5 seconds (maybe happens about once every 2-3 months), and they both seem to take much longer to wake up from the lock screen, again in the order of 5 seconds. Other than that had no problems whatsoever, and definitely the sound is much reduced. I only hear it at all when the GPU is maxxed out, and it's not unbearable like it is when it's right next to you. 4 years ago, the cables were £9 each for 5M DP M-M and £10 for the 5M active USB3 cable, but it's pretty cheap for the quality of life improvement.

All the long cables are Monoprice.com "slim run" fiber optic cables.

The HDMI pretty much just works. Even at 8k resolution. Note that last I checked, Monoprice's DisplayPort cables (as opposed to HDMI) only supported an older standard and they don't handle 8k. Most of my monitors are 4k though, and the DisplayPort cables work fine for that.

USB can be finicky. Sometimes certain devices, or plugging and unplugging devices too much, can "crash" the USB cable, requiring a "reboot" by unplugging it and plugging it back in, from the computer end. But if you're just using a keyboard and mouse through it it's basically fine.

Look into KVM extenders. Beware though that there are two main types - standard KVM Extenders (which is more or less point to point - you can't connect these to an existing wired network) and IP KVM Extenders (which can run across an existing ethernet or fibre network). Its get complicated but getting those two confused at the outset can lead to a lot of unnecessary pain and expense.

Thank you so much for sharing on a website, as someone who started LAN gaming in the 90's it was a real joy to read, especially with the FAQ.

Regarding the lack of patch panel, while not ideal it probably isn't going to make any difference as the cables can probably survive being handled 100s or 1000s of times without any real chance of issues.

Hi Kenton! Big fan of the build and the writeup. The "cat bathroom" and cat-walk has lived rent free in my head since I read this the first time, and I fully intend on replicating it if ever I'm lucky enough to build a home.

Thanks for sharing this awesome project!

What games do you play? Are there multiple ones going on?

It is crazy to me that you not only have that many friends free to visit at the same time, but also that they're all interested in PC gaming. All while having kids (or at least you do).

I was at a LAN party a few months ago, but it was with a retro PC club more than a group of friends (altough I am friends with a couple of those guys). Someone setup Netware and had a dashboard connected to a big screen showing machines connected over IPX. Worked great for games like Doom II. But I can't imagine wanting to do that more than like, once a year. I'm more of a small group of friends + board games person.

It’s in the FAQ. Mostly cooperative, not winner takes all. Lots of genres.

Hi Kenton!

One thing I'm wondering about (and was happy to see) is how you seem to have your (childhood) friends close by, at least on occasion.

I live in Europe and am considering what a move somewhere else in Europe (+/- 1000km) would mean. Seeing much less of my long-time friends, I imagine. But Austin seems much further from the earlier places you've stated you've lived. Did some of your friends just move with you? Are they visiting often?

I’m sorry your getting so much hate, this is a really cool and unique project.

Every time I see this posted, I am tempted to do something similar but then I remember all the friends I used to have for LAN parties have moved different places across the country, so it'd get used at most once a year (we still have a yearly New Years LAN party). I think this is an awesome project though and I give you props not only for doing it, but maintaining relationships to make it useful.

Thank you for posting the other thread, it's much more interesting to read through.

Your house is inspiring!

Awesome project!

My buddies and I do quarterly lan parties to play Q3, unreal tournament, tribes, l4d2, and a bunch of others stuff we find. We also bbq and hike. It's a great way to keep friend groups going!

It's almost like they stopped making good games in the last 10 years.... looks around - nice games you're playing!

Hahaha, yeah. It tells you about my age group for sure. But there are some new titles like RV Together that are pretty good too. We just don't have a ton of bandwidth to try new stuff too since it's usually 1 night every 2-4 months :-)

Serious Sam might be a nice addition.

Looks pretty cool. I wonder why you kept all of the individual power adapters, instead of opting for neater rails with beefier and more efficient power supplies.

No good reason, I'm just not familiar with power rails, nor was my contractor.

That happens. The house does look beautiful. Thank you for sharing pics.

I just really like the folding cabinet setups.

uh oh the baron is big mad

you are a good person!

You rich. You give job. I clean.

The key is that the author is present, rather than people having different views on wealth over time?

Views on wealth haven't changed.

The reactions to my first (much smaller) house in 2011 were very similar.

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