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We built our house for LAN parties (2024)

We built our house for LAN parties (2024)

fittingopposite

Comments (160)

  • kenty
    > How much did this cost? The 22 game machines (including monitors, cables, and peripherals) cost about $75,000 in total. The house overall was a 7-digit number.I needed like a minute to process this. These folks are privileged as hell. I understand that folks on HN are typically affluent but this is rich rich level.
  • pringk02
    I'm not usually one to comment on other people's home decor but this house looks like living inside a generic office building. The board game room looks like somewhere you'd have a conference call. I'm somewhat fascinated. I can't imagine choosing to make your living space look like this willingly. And yet they have! So they must enjoy it and it must feel like home to them.
  • swiftcoder
    God, imagine having a big enough friend group as an adult to justify an 18-gaming-PC LAN. These folks are doing something right
  • jamiecurle
    > The cabinetry is just a bunch of wood, cut into fairly large pieces. Maybe a few screws and hinges. Whereas the computers in total contain more than a trillion transistors, each of which had to be carefully etched in the right spot connected correctly to all the others. A trillion! That's 1,000,000,000,000!Really cool house, but describing the cabinets as "bunch of wood, cut into fairly large pieces. Maybe a few screws and hinges" shows little understanding of what goes into building something like that.It's hard to tell from the pics if the cabinets are made of sheet goods with veneer or solid boards glued into panels. But at the very least, the trees need to be grown, they need to be managed, they need to be felled, sent to processing for sheet goods, dried and milled for solid wood. Even then you've got to get everything cut to size and square, then build the cabinets with all the specific sizes, then finish them, transport to site and install everything and the trim.It's two ends of the manufacturing scale. For transistors, you've got mass production at an impossibly difficult level of accuracy for a human and for cabinets you've got single production (at the install level) at very difficult level for a human.But again, very, very cool house. I especially like the cat doors but not nearly half as much as I imagine the cat does.
  • rob74
    > We have efficient heat pumps and solar panels, but it's still a disturbing amount of energy usage and something I'm trying to debug. Perhaps we have too many windows letting in too much sunlight...External window blinds work wonders with that - your AC doesn't have to work hard to get the heat out of the greenhouse you inadvertently built if you avoid the heat getting in in the first place. But yeah, these might be more widespread over here in Europe than in the US...
  • tristanj
    This LAN house was featured in a LTT video. There's an entire house walkthrough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Y0MVUgjOw
  • unpopularopp
    I will never understand rich people. You won life, you live better than billions but somehow that’s not enough you have to boast about it. Even seemingly good folks like Gabe Newell is doing the same with his 360ft superyacht. As if they seek the validation because otherwise they know it’s all meaningless and empty.
  • chinathrow
    As someone without that much money at hand, I enjoyed reading the section further down the page. Well written and congrats on the success!
  • 28304283409234
    The basement is awesome, but I would not feel cozy and welcome there. From the pictures it feels like any serverroom I've ever been into. Unwanted tips: Put some plants in there, some color, some wall-to-wall gaming art prints on the closet-doors and floors. <3
  • arjie
    It’s been on HN a few times and I’ve always enjoyed looking at it. I think it looks great, fantastic setup, cat walks and doors. LAN parties with your friends for 30 years is awesome! Now that is hard to replicate even if one uses the house design as inspiration!My buddies and I sometimes reminisce fondly about those times (we are now spread across the globe) but fortunately we all still chat every time there’s an Arsenal game - an automatic Schelling point no matter where in the world you are.None of us plays video games much any more so there’s no loss in it but it feels pleasantly nostalgic.
  • haunter
    MTV used to have this show called Cribs where celebrities showed their house around and cars and everything. Basically bragging about their rich life. I have the same feeling opening this site. Maybe we need an MTV Cribs SV edition.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV_Cribs
  • Schlagbohrer
    If/when widespread Netwar occurs and the US and China and other actors balkanize the internet, along with common outages, maybe we'll see a resurgence of in-person LAN gaming again.
  • gorgoiler
    I really love the idea of having all the PCs in some place far away from where I, the human am sitting, but I don’t know how to do that. HDMI and USB cables can’t work over more than a few tens of feet can they? Or maybe these are special shielded cables, or sent down shielded cat6 cabling? Would love to have even more details on how to do this.Also, since saying goodbye to my dad in hospital last year, whenever I hear about people enjoying time with their own fathers I feel really happy. I would have loved to build a house with my dad!
  • wraptile
    This makes me really miss LAN parties. What an absolute gem of early PC culture that is sadly mostly forgotten? A reasonable replacement is phone gaming parties and I'm not kidding - it's really fun! We did Among Us phone LAN party recently and it was a blast.
  • wizerno
  • elAhmo
    Wholesome read. These guys are enjoying life and I loved reading the FAQ in the end, as well as them acknowledging they are very lucky!
  • bayindirh
    Normal room: Integrated catwalk with cat doors to other cat places.Alright.
  • takoid
    I couldn't help but notice the lack of mousepads[1]. Please get your poor guests some mousepads![1]: https://lanparty.house/images/office-action-overhead.jpg
  • yakkomajuri
    The lack of any decoration is what struck me.Otherwise really cool! Enjoyed the FAQ and appreciate the courage to put this out given the types of comments one receives online (see thread).The resumes are impressive :) didn't realize Kenton had created Cap'n Proto
  • Aboutplants
    The funnest part of this whole thing is the manual litter box, literally the worst part of having a cat, and it’s been solved through technology (litter robots). Everything in the house has tech, except the one thing that has you picking up actual shit every day.Zoom out buddy
  • Aeolun
    I've seen this so many times, and every time it makes me smile. Especially the 'how the hell did we manage this' section.
  • apexalpha
    While I am a bit jealous of the ability to buy a in-house gaming cafe setup for $75.000 there is little in here that is particularely noteworthy.Everyone that has $75k can buy hardware? I guess the Netboot setup might be interesting?Giving me MTV Cribs vibes where people pretend to be interested in a particular feature of a house while in reality it's just a 45min boast of how rich they are, broadcast in a socially acceptable way.
  • emh68
    I've been thinking about running a "mystery retro LAN party". Dig into a big cardboard box and pull out an old gaming laptop. You get what you get. Then go try to get top frag!
  • r0ckarong
    I hope they invested similar money in their home security.
  • m4tthumphrey
    Just came here to say, everything about this is incredible. The house itself, the site, the FAQs but most of all, the attention that went into the cat's needs.11/10.We want(ed) to do something similar (re the cats needs) when renovating our house but just could never decide!
  • _ink_
    I really wonder where people find the time. Like two people, probably working stressful jobs, kids and still find the time to design and build something like this and probably also use it. Fascinating.
  • joaquincabezas
    I recently landed (again) at this website while reading about Kenton Varda‘s work on Cloudflare workers. It was a nice “aha” moment!
  • yigalirani
    Wow that's really nice house
  • Igrom
    (2024)
  • qsera
    Worried about if they could that no one asked if they should...
  • bhtru
    Dude this is so freaking cool.Especially the cat entrances / infra to allow them access throughout the home and while human doors are closed. Would love to see a cat POV via an action cam of them running through the home.
  • anon
    undefined
  • Havoc
    Ngl having a house with a hot side for rack cooling sounds like homelab fun
  • hajrice
    Great landing page! (if I can call it so?)
  • anon
    undefined
  • ThePowerOfFuet
    >All network equipment and cameras are UniFi.Wow. Imagine having this budget and then doing this.
  • iomer
    wow.
  • Simulacra
    Who has enough friends past 30 to even justify a lan party? Lol
  • lifestyleguru
    Rich people are rich, ok I get it.
  • canto
    Nice flex, lol.
  • anon
    undefined
  • rustysnail
    [dead]
  • fleroviumna
    [dead]
  • alpineman
    Late stage capitalism
  • temp0826
    "Invite only", ok I get they're rich but I wonder about the airbnb potential for recouping some of that cost.