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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)

#371

Post by kubb »

jebarker wrote: post #333
kubb wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I say that people (or as you refer to them „private individuals”) using their economic means (and therefore resources and time of others that they hire) on misguided projects is a negative phenomenon, that’s a whole complete statement. I don’t need to design any world changes to go with that. So your line of inquiry makes it seem like you’re fighting some phantoms or replicating debate strategies that you’ve obs…

I noticed you edited your original post to point out these “silly” objections. The point of saying “private individuals” is that they have the right to determine for themselves what is a good use of their money and your opinion about whether it’s wasteful is irrelevant. I was assuming you had some ideas about how to reduce the waste but apparently not, you just wanted to tell everyone about your personal preferences…

They do have that right and it results in waste.

Maybe they should be shamed for vanity projects and not admired?

Maybe admitting that the phenomenon exists is the first step before any ideas can even be discussed? Clearly it’s extremely difficult for people to recognize.

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

#372

Post by hn993302 »

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 just really like the folding cabinet setups.

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

#373

Post by dabluecaboose »

vrganj wrote: post #362
dabluecaboose wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#374

Post by vrganj »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #373
vrganj wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inq…

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.

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

#375

Post by MentalM »

jonheller wrote: post #217

Sad to see so much anger expressed at this couple's financial success and how they decided to use that and then do what I thought was a interesting, fun, and in no way "rub in your face" or arrogant writeup about it. The author even recognized his luck with his financial situation in terms of things like the housing market in California. I'm not sure what the angry people in this thread want. That they should have do…

> There are good arguments that the wealth distribution in our country has some serious issues

There are good arguments that as a whole the wealth distribution in your country does not have any serious issues, but this article strongly suggests that it is not true in this particular case.

I mean the author, trying to be as transparent as possible, literally says that he can not say how much money they spent on building of this house. Generally that implies keeping your private lives private, but his article strongly suggests that is not the concern of the author. And considering that, there are only bad reasons remains on why he would want to do it.

1. Tax payment fraud. 2. Government subsidy fraud 3. Income from criminal activities

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

#376

Post by tikimcfee »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #328
tikimcfee wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being complicit in feeding a malicious whale is often just as bad as being the malicious whale. When 1000 people all thing "I'm not doing that many objectively bad things at this company," that's 1000 workers under 1 tiny group's control deciding the destinies and "luck" of millions. It's obfuscation of power and responsibility, and I think people "in tech" need to realize this and accept it more than they do right n…

The word "complicit" is sneaking in a lot of philosophical baggage into your statement. Surely you cannot mean that being witness to a murder (while failing to prevent it) and committing the murder are the same sin? Or that they should be held to the same degree of judgement? While we may say the cowardly bystander has less moral character than the one who would risk their life to attempt to stop the murder, surely y…

No, my word choice is not sneaking in any philosophy.

> complicit /kəm-plĭs′ĭt/

adjective Associated with or participating in an activity, especially one of a questionable nature.

--

A witness is not participating in a murder and by only a stretch of the word is associated with it by means of them recording a version of the events in their brain.

I have to say you clearly write effectively, but surely you see that you're the one "sneaking in" philosophy here?

Pretending that slow, oppressive, plodding, calculated, rising control of a population of workers by means of wage control, obfuscation of responsibility, and simple lying to a public about goods or services is somehow murder is completely intellectually dishonest.

It is possible and necessary to recognize that there is more than one category of crime, and that each category of crime deserves its own social understanding and justice.

If I worked for a "defense" company a year or two before while they sold a gun toting robot dog, I would be complicit in its usage to kill people; if I stay there, I continue to be. I did not have to touch a single human being to be morally judged that I participated or was associated with a questionable activity.

If I worked for Facebook while they actively experimented on teenagers and children and adults to influence their minds and choices to determine their levels of suicidal tendencies without regard to their safety, I would be complicit in their actions.

I take no pleasure in saying this, because I don't know who you are, where you come from, or what you do or don't believe. What I can point as is you have tried to take a word "complicit" as a perfectly accurate word, stretch it to an invalid comparison, and then from that comparison, create a meaningless argument unrelated to my point.

That is the type of action, thinking, and wordplay I do not trust.

Yes. Working for Google is complicity in all their affairs. Witnessing a murder is not complicity in its timeline. Association by external sensory intake is not the same thing as association by direct participation, and direct participation or association with a murder is very obviously something we can morally judge.

For the sake of my own sanity, I'll assume you're simply not understanding the word choice of complicity, or are assuming that being complicit is somehow a binary judgement of quantitative punitive punishment.

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

#377

Post by matheusmoreira »

kentonv wrote: post #225
gorgoiler wrote: post #124

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 h…

You can get ultra-long HDMI and USB extenders that use fiber optic cables. Monoprice.com in particular sells these under their "slimrun" line -- that's what I used in the house. They are often technically not spec-compliant but work just fine in practice.

> ultra-long HDMI and USB extenders

No extra latency from these?

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

#378

Post by ilamont »

badc0ffee wrote: post #279
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…

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 an…

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

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

#379

Post by eterm »

ssl-3 wrote: post #19
swiftcoder wrote: post #3

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

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 biggest problem was that the first ~couple of hours were spent getting all of the PCs connected, updated, and working properly-enough.

Every lan party would have that one guy who turned up with nothing pre-installed or patched, and would finally, after a couple of hours, get their copy of Unreal Tournament working and join the game just as everyone had grown tired of it and were ready to hop into another game instead. This would rinse and repeat for almost every game.

I had some sympathy, but not too much, because we were generally fairly organised about sending out game lists in advance.

There was something delightfully chaotic about trying to get a good game of anything actually played, because even without technical problems, you'd get a situation where at most a third of the players were keen, another third were mildly amused and another third were basically just barely tolerating it because they wanted to play something next and didn't want to ruin the vibe, but clearly would much rather be playing almost anything else. Of course, as games rotated, so did these groups.

There was also that corner of people who had no intention of playing anything and were just there to utilise the ability to privately swap their terrabyte sized "anime" collections across fast ethernet ( or via physically handing over hard-drives ). I tended to leave them well alone.

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

#380

Post by matheusmoreira »

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.

> One would almost expect the computer to cost millions of dollars

By 2030 they probably will...

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