We built our house for LAN parties

> 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.

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.

> 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...

God, imagine having a big enough friend group as an adult to justify an 18-gaming-PC LAN. These folks are doing something right

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

> 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.

This LAN house was featured in a LTT video. There's an entire house walkthrough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Y0MVUgjOw

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

Normal room: Integrated catwalk with cat doors to other cat places.

Alright.

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

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

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!

Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42156977

I hope they invested similar money in their home security.

>All network equipment and cameras are UniFi.

Wow. Imagine having this budget and then doing this.

Worried about if they could that no one asked if they should...

I've seen this so many times, and every time it makes me smile. Especially the 'how the hell did we manage this' section.

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!

Great landing page! (if I can call it so?)

I recently landed (again) at this website while reading about Kenton Varda‘s work on Cloudflare workers. It was a nice “aha” moment!

Ngl having a house with a hot side for rack cooling sounds like homelab fun

(2024)

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.

Rich people are rich, ok I get it.

Late stage capitalism

[dead]

"Invite only", ok I get they're rich but I wonder about the airbnb potential for recouping some of that cost.