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We built our house for LAN parties (2024)

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Re: We built our house for LAN parties (2024)

#311

Post by kentonv »

kubb wrote: post #300
kentonv wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs will tell you whatever you want to hear. You subtly direct them with the way you ask the question, and then they give you the answer you want. That's basically what they're trained to do. So of course they always give you the answer you want -- but you can't just go around telling people to ask an LLM to back up your argument, as other people will get a difference answer.

I don’t think that’s true anymore. You can ask for weak points of a position (e.g. that luxury spending is good for the economy) and they will give you a reasonable answer. You could do the opposite - what are the weak points of the position that accumulation of wealth leads to waste and see what are the weak points there. And then think which position can be dismantled more easily and is therefore less well founded.…

If you had ten million dollars, what would you spend it on?

Re: We built our house for LAN parties (2024)

#312

Post by jebarker »

kubb wrote: post #309
jebarker wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the mechanism by which you imagine that this private individuals $75K becomes a public internet cafe?

You mean 1.075M? The house was the bulk of it. But that’s the point. A private individual will use his economic power on vanity spending and it won’t materialize into anything efficient or useful.

OK - what is the mechanism by which you believe this private individual’s $1.075M should be turned into a public internet cafe?

Re: We built our house for LAN parties (2024)

#314

Post by Dig1t »

kenty wrote: post #60

[flagged]

This is not crazy at all for anyone from the Bay Area. A rundown house in a not so great part of the bay is seven figures minimum. 75k is a typical bonus at a company like Facebook or Google. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of tech workers that are at this level of wealth.

Re: We built our house for LAN parties (2024)

#315

Post by nancyminusone »

rpdillon wrote: post #240
kentonv wrote: post #183

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…

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:…

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.

Re: We built our house for LAN parties (2024)

#317

Post by ssl-3 »

quickthrowman wrote: post #293
ssl-3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had LAN parties like that once upon a time when we had a space that supported it. Friends of friends would show up. Not everyone knew everyone else and this was fine. Cold drinks of every sort were available at the carry-out next door, and some would bring things to share. Donations were had for pizza or burgers (sometimes nowhere near enough donations, and sometimes more than plenty; it averaged OK). The social a…

> (The second-largest problem -- the smell -- is a different issue entirely. It usually ramped up pretty well by the time the first problem was approaching being solved.) Makeup air unit and exhaust fan, just like a commercial kitchen, sans the hood and fire surpression. The exhaust fan should have a slightly higher cfm that the makeup air unit to maintain negative pressure so the body odor does not escape the gaming…

It was an old (circa 1890, ish), 2-story industrial building made from concrete. The whole thing was big by gaming cave standards, and quite small by modern industrial standards. Another section of it once had equipment that was driven by an overhead lineshaft.

Our area of it featured an interior natural gas well that we did not question much. It was just back there in one corner, with extraction equipment, sitting idle; we built a wall faced with clapboard in front of it that we hung neatly-bundled cables from.

DSL had just been introduced to the area wherein DOCSIS was not yet a thing, so we had a lot more bandwidth than some of the participants did at home. 10/100 switching hubs were all the rage in affordable networking gear. LAN parties and gaming happened.

Rent was very inexpensive and we were much younger. One year, rent was paid by putting a fresh layer of muck on the roof over the course of a few days.

The primary intended purpose was for it to be used as a recording studio (we could lay down 12 digital tracks at once!), and we did manage to make it pay its own bills most months, but those bills were tiny.

They'd have all laughed at me if I sent a hat around the room to collect for a heat exchanger to get some fresh air inside and reduce the stink. ;)

(But the original comment was mostly about the people. They showed up. 18? Probably. Maybe more, but often less. Getting enough folks to show up was always the easy part.)

Re: We built our house for LAN parties (2024)

#318

Post by fc417fc802 »

kubb wrote: post #285
fc417fc802 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has to be some sort of record. Not only did you set up a strawman to facilitate a shallow dismissal, rather than tilting at it yourself you simply assured us that AI is capable of shredding it. Somehow you've managed an even more offensive variant of the "condescendingly hand out a reading assignment to strangers" trope.

I’ve gotten two separate responses reaffirming the very same “strawmen”, so I guess the cliches exist? In my opinion it’s even more disrespectful to pretend that a simple counter argument doesn’t exist, and keep doubling down on the cliche. Just that ignorance is not an excuse anymore. We have knowledge conveniently available.

Make the argument yourself, directly, in your own words or GTFO.

Re: We built our house for LAN parties (2024)

#319

Post by Symbiote »

bluGill wrote: post #278
kentonv wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

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.

Re: We built our house for LAN parties (2024)

#320

Post by 1-more »

kentonv wrote: post #201
sorenjan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He spent more on gaming computers than my yearly salary, and then follows it up with > I actually find it funny how cheap computers are.

If you read it in context, I am making a comparison between computers and cabinetry, and noting how absurd it is that the technological marvel that is a computer costs a similar amount of money to the cabinet holding it, which is just some wood and hinges. One would almost expect the computer to cost millions of dollars, but instead it costs thousands. Maybe "cheap" was a poor choice of word for this. Sorry.

I always marvel at technology the same way: $200 gets you a whole lot of TV, or a coffee table that will not survive two moves. Also I cut and trimmed a cat door into our laundry room so the girls could do their business, so I very much approve of going a little bit over the top for your kitties. Maybe when my son is old enough for the cats to see him at night I'll work on a solution similar to yours.
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