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| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial) |
| Visit Hacker News on the Web |
|
COMMENT PAGE FOR: |
| Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties |
|
v3ss0n wrote 26 min ago:
If you are doing lan-parties , this opensource AAA Game is the best .
[1] It is Command and Conquer Renegade , RTS + FPS Game
with frontend backend opensourced rebuild from scratch in Unreal 3 .
Needs a lot of teamwork and strategy to win and all gameplay is
according to CNC Rules. [2] Source code [3] [4] Game Client [1]
downloads.html
They have a New game working in Unreal 4 Which have full build building
and production RTS mechanic. [6] They would use some help from you guys
to spread around, they are fully self funded and voulenteers working
full time , to build a game that is fun for hardcore playerbase.
|
| [1]: https://totemarts.games/games/renegade-x/ |
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VHennwBhG8 |
| [3]: https://github.com/TotemArts/Renegade-X |
| [4]: https://totemarts.games/forums/files/file/7-renegade-x-softwar... |
| [5]: https://totemarts.games/games/renegade-x/downloads.html |
| [6]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhzZ3GMerz4 |
|
Farbklex wrote 37 min ago:
We also have two friends with dedicated LAN party basements. But it's
way more casual. They have 10 old office PCs each that were available
for pretty much free. We meet around every two months to play old
games. Stuff like Half Life 1 DM.
I,ve also started playing with Linux and Lutris to pre-install old
games. Still need to figure out the netboot part.
Also regarding the Steam / Epic situation: Steam has a PC Café program
where you can buy licenses which then can be used by people with their
own steam accounts while they are in your local network. I set it up
once and it is a neat feature.
appel wrote 1 hour 23 min ago:
All this is truly, truly outstanding, except for one bit:
> Cat doors allow cats access to bedrooms when human doors are closed.
Kenton, you have made a grave mistake.
keb_ wrote 1 hour 30 min ago:
damn if I had this kinda money I'd do something crazy. like pay off my
parent's mortgage.
pistoleer wrote 2 hours 28 min ago:
Those cat corridors are cool as shit. I love little doors and hidden
hallways, it's almost victorian. I would only worry about "noise"
leaking out of the bedrooms...
heraldgeezer wrote 2 hours 36 min ago:
Damn... I read those profiles and I feel sick. I wasted my life on
reddit, youtube and forums.
heraldgeezer wrote 2 hours 39 min ago:
Invite LinusTechTips now!!!
heraldgeezer wrote 2 hours 40 min ago:
The amazing thing about gaming is, if you build for it, everything else
works.
Due to high specs and amazing connectivity, video meetings, coding, dev
work all run great. Sure some xeon or threeadrippers would be better
but still. Networking is key, use cables whenever possible.
cannibalXxx wrote 3 hours 5 min ago:
i really enjoy seeing and reading content like this. the way the
process is developed and worked on by the team
lucasfcosta wrote 3 hours 5 min ago:
I love this idea so much.
Lan parties were probably the best part of my teenage years.
Also, the terrace part is amazing.
I miss the good old days of playing DotA (the old one) the whole night
while drinking coke and eating pizza with friends.
mschuster91 wrote 3 hours 29 min ago:
> The machines all boot off of a network drive based on this image.
Each machine gets a copy-on-write overlay on top of the main image, so
that guests can make changes to their machine which won't be seen by
any other, and will be deleted at the end of the party.
How do you deal with Windows licensing/activation in that scenario? I
didn't see anything in the Github repository, and I can't imagine that
not being the worst PITA.
vuckov wrote 3 hours 45 min ago:
No mention of air conditioning? That basement is going to reek with so
many sweaty nerds in there grinding and stinking away on their
gamestations for hours on end.
kitsune_ wrote 4 hours 9 min ago:
It's a tangent but I think two white collar workers being able to
afford this and having this lifestyle is why Trump won.
hehehheh wrote 4 hours 54 min ago:
Thanks for the backstory to your career success! While I see the money
as awesome, just working for CF at such a level must be great. I hope
to get a job with them one day!
grose wrote 5 hours 49 min ago:
I love the catwalk that's actually for cats, the little cat doors and
cat restrooms. Nice to see some cat-friendly architecture. Very cool.
frazar0 wrote 6 hours 8 min ago:
> RGB: None
I chuckled.
Animats wrote 6 hours 14 min ago:
A PC bang in your house?[1] Why not?
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_bang |
|
0xDEAFBEAD wrote 6 hours 27 min ago:
Sweet setup!
I used to play games over LAN with my brothers when we were teenagers.
We played every year or two, and every time we'd spend hours fiddling
with the networking in order to get things to work. This was annoying.
It left me dreaming about a LAN cafe where the proprietor has lots of
games pre-installed, and you can just sit down and play with your
friends, or make some new friends and play with them.
This could be especially good for cult classic games from previous
decades that are even more difficult to get working with modern
OS+hardware. I'm thinking of the game Moonbase Commander in
particular.
|
| [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/254880/MoonBase_Commander/ |
|
ikt wrote 7 hours 45 min ago:
Only thing I'm surprised about is the intel+nvidia combo not an AMD/AMD
or AMD+Nvidia combo
bschwindHN wrote 8 hours 15 min ago:
I'm building a game that I think would do quite well in a LAN party
setting. If I ever finish it (big if) I'll be sure to get your
attention and see if you'd give it a try :)
Thanks for sharing all the details on this, looks like an incredibly
fun and nice house.
esafak wrote 9 hours 30 min ago:
> The cabinetry around the game stations cost a similar amount to the
computers powering them. Think about that! The cabinetry is just a
bunch of wood, cut into fairly large pieces. Maybe a few screws and
hinges.
As a person redoing a kitchen, I am disappointed that each cabinet
costs something like a thousand dollars. They've gotta be doing
something wrong. The prices make no sense to me; this is centuries old
technology, and wood is abundant. How can they not optimize it?!
sriram_malhar wrote 10 hours 8 min ago:
Amazing build, and even better, a set of long time friends. You and
your wife are rich in all senses.
I was wondering what the maximum power draw you have seen. Do you
monitor your energy usage during normal use and during a party with all
machines buzzing.
kentonv wrote 9 hours 47 min ago:
I haven't actually monitored power usage during parties. But I should
do that at the next one... I have better equipment for than now that
since we finished the solar install!
I suspect though that even when the game machines are running they
probably don't draw all that much power compared to the HVAC. We seem
to have ~10-12kW going to HVAC throughout the day... this feels
broken to me (these are supposed to be high-efficiency heat pumps and
such) but I haven't been able to figure out what's wrong yet.
Whereas if all the computers were drawing the theoretical maximum
their PSUs support (750W each) that would be 15kW, but in practice I
suspect they draw a small fraction of that most of the time, even
when in-game.
hunter2_ wrote 6 hours 2 min ago:
It's almost certainly insolation (sol, not sul). UV/IR rejecting
film on the windows might help, given mild enough winters that
blocking it year round is fine. Check out [1] If you can find
someone willing to do it, dumping the heat (pumped out as air
conditioning) directly into the pool would be quite efficient
relative to heating the pool separately. Have it dump to the
ambient outdoor air only as overflow when the pool's thermostat is
satisfied (upper 80s or whatever).
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/uhbDfi7Ee7k |
|
ChuckMcM wrote 10 hours 46 min ago:
That is an awesome house and a great story. I'd be really curious to
know what the people who bought your house in Palo Alto did with the
house (and did you leave the gear with it? It looks like you bought all
new computers for the new place so ...)
I'm curious too how the planning folks reacted when you got the
permits. I would expect Austin to go more smoothly than Palo Alto but
that would be interesting to know about too.
kentonv wrote 10 hours 16 min ago:
> I'd be really curious to know what the people who bought your house
in Palo Alto did with the house
I don't really know. I never spoke with them directly (real estate
agents like to avoid that...). I did leave the equipment, but the
buyer was a family and my impression was that they weren't
particularly interested in the LAN setup, so it's possible they
ripped it all out.
I looked up the house on street view and they have a Tesla parked in
the front yard (on dirt/grass) which strikes me as a hilarious
combination of Bay Area and hillbilly. (There is a carport in the
back of the house, I don't know why they aren't using it!)
Anyway, the computers were a bit outdated so I don't think it would
have been useful to bring them with us.
> I would expect Austin to go more smoothly than Palo Alto but that
would be interesting to know about too.
Loooooooool, no. Austin was actually much worse. It took six months!
Though it was in the middle of the pandemic, maybe that was part of
it.
But the plans as submitted for permitting didn't really show any of
the LAN party stuff so there really wasn't anything unusual to react
to.
Daub wrote 10 hours 57 min ago:
Looking at this I was making noises like Homer Simpson looking at
donuts.
viiralvx wrote 11 hours 14 min ago:
Not gonna lie, this is really dope! Can I be your friend and drive from
Houston for a LAN Party?
voisin wrote 11 hours 6 min ago:
He answers this in the FAQ. Youâve got to get into his friend group
or get hired by Cloudflare. Not sure which is more challenging!
calvinmorrison wrote 11 hours 18 min ago:
The 22 game machines (including monitors, cables, and peripherals) cost
about $75,000 in total. The house overall was a 7-digit number. Sorry,
I'm not comfortable being any more specific than that.
babyent wrote 12 hours 1 min ago:
Awesome build. I also really enjoyed reading about you. Wish you both
all the best :)
Cheers, to many GGs at the LAN parties.
hokumguru wrote 12 hours 34 min ago:
Dumb question but what are you using to transfer gaming quality video
and usb signal over long distance like this? I tried a fiber cable from
Infinite Cables earlier this year for a similar situation but
couldnât get it quite working.
kentonv wrote 12 hours 25 min ago:
Monoprice SlimRun cables -- they have USB, DisplayPort, and HDMI.
They transmit over fiber optic and seem to work just fine even at
100ft.
michaelhoney wrote 12 hours 42 min ago:
I salute your commitment to fun and friends, this is awesome.
9x39 wrote 12 hours 46 min ago:
Given it's only 20 pcs, I might have just opted for fully local
machines with a basic disk overlay software with exceptions for where
Steam and Epic live. Course, engineering a centralized solution can be
fun, but locked-down PCs are just simple. Having built corporate RDP
and VDI solutions I'm just biased towards keeping things simple these
days and pushing admin work off myself.
Going off the local PC only idea, you could script just your rebuilds
of them in the off chance something goes south, along with maybe a disk
image with the majority of common games loaded. This is just thinking
along the lines it's friends and family, not the general public. I'd
probably use gigabit Internet (or more) which makes updates you're
missing fast, while Steam lets PCs on a LAN share updated files and
save bandwidth.
Did you consider patch panels or things like PatchBox to organize those
UTP cables or allow for changes in your switching later?
kentonv wrote 12 hours 18 min ago:
Hmm, that sounds like a lot more maintenance work to me.
The way I have it set up, I am essentially maintaining only one PC,
in a totally normal way. I update Windows by pulling up Windows
Update in the control panel, etc. Since I only have to do it for one
machine this is fine -- orchestrating updating 20 machines sounds
like a pain. Yeah I know there are enterprise tools for this but why
bother?
Once I've updated that one machine I just run one command on the
server and now all the machines have cloned it. At the end of the
party I run one command and all the machines are reverted.
Also I can give everyone full admin access to their machine (which
you sometimes need for games) and not have to worry about it, because
I know it'll all be completely reverted later.
9x39 wrote 8 hours 40 min ago:
Ah, I think I see where I failed to explain what I meant.
You could skip the orchestration and remote storage layers
altogether and cut your commands you run down to ~0 with local nvme
SSDs. What orchestration do PCs running Steam and Epic need?
Machines can just auto-update, unless you really like reinventing
that or only have a few megabits of bandwidth.
Again, it's not that the netboot setup isn't cool to see built, I
was just thinking out loud how to simplify it even further.
kentonv wrote 8 hours 28 min ago:
I guess you're suggesting I leave the machines on and hope they
all update themselves in the background.
I don't think that would really work. Not all the changes I make
to machines before a party are things that they'd do
automatically if just left to sit. E.g. I usually install some
new games some people suggested, or download the latest nvidia
driver directly from the web site (where they are available
before Windows Update gets them), or remove games we aren't
playing anymore to free up space (or because they are constantly
downloading enormous updates wasting banwidth), etc.
Also, I don't actually leave the machines running outside of
parties, and updates don't just all happen immediately when you
turn the machine on... I'd have to start them up a few days in
advance.
LelouBil wrote 11 hours 12 min ago:
I meant your thing works great so good for you !
But to me it sounds harder to maintain than just wake on lan + pxe
to reimage the machines before every lan party.
I think it's specifically the fact that they access their disk
remotely live that's bothering me.
Why not just image it to the ssd and call it a day ?
kentonv wrote 11 hours 5 min ago:
Why not do it live? It works!
Well, OK, admittedly in the latest build, I have some stability
issues right after boot. But in the worst case the machine
reboots once or twice, and then it works. If it doesn't BSOD in
the first five minutes then it's good, and everything works every
bit as well as if the storage were local.
Whereas reimaging all the machines would actually take more time
than waiting for this stability issue to work itself out. And
would also require that I install storage in all the machines big
enough to hold the main image (currently, they don't have this).
Overall I find it more convenient this way.
Note that the stability issue is specific to my hardware/drivers
-- I didn't have any such problem in the Palo Alto house.
aeturnum wrote 12 hours 50 min ago:
This is an extremely clever setup and certainly looks wonderful - but
to me LAN parties are only LAN parties when people bring the computers
with them (in much the same way that Champaign is only Champaign when
from a certain place in France). That being said it looks wonderful and
I hope it gives you and your community many years of enjoyment.
kentonv wrote 12 hours 17 min ago:
I thought that too originally! This is covered in the Q&A:
|
| [1]: https://lanparty.house/#why-build-in |
|
luispa wrote 12 hours 51 min ago:
cat
brink wrote 12 hours 55 min ago:
Nice work mate. I hope it all makes you happy!
XCSme wrote 13 hours 10 min ago:
Random thought: would a gaming streaming service like GeForce Now
achieve a similar result for a lan party? Assuming you have the network
bandwidth, I am curious what the difference in input lag/quality would
be, and if, when doing a blind test, anyone would notice.
I guess you could even test this, by running GeForce Now on all
computers vs native.
kentonv wrote 13 hours 2 min ago:
Ehh... I'm very skeptical of those streaming services.
I tried Stadia once. Played Celeste. The results were very
interesting. I didn't exactly perceive latency, but I did perceive
that the game felt wrong. As a result, my favorite game of all time
was not fun when playing on Stadia. If I didn't have the local
version of the game to compare against, I would probably have blamed
the game, because again, it didn't feel like latency was the problem.
I dunno, maybe that experience was skewed by the fact that Celeste is
probably one of the most timing-sensitive games out there and I'd
played it a lot... but now I'm worried that anything played via one
of these streaming services is just going to be subtly less fun. I
think I'll stick to local gaming.
digitaltensor wrote 11 hours 45 min ago:
You're missing out, definitely give it a go! GeforceNow is a
staggering leap over all the other previous cloud streaming
services imo. The experience in Austin specifically is amazing, I
get ~5ms (!) RTT latency to their datacenter in Dallas. Combine
that with h/w AV1 decoding, the difference versus local is almost
unperceivable.
XCSme wrote 13 hours 9 min ago:
That could be the poor's man, on-demand, lan party.
If not for the PCs, you would still need some devices to run the
games.
LakesAndTrees wrote 13 hours 53 min ago:
I think the thing that Iâm most amazed by - and this setup is truly
amazing - is the fact that youâve got a group of friends to enjoy
this with. Good for you; this looks like a blast, and I can only
imagine how fun thatâd be, compared to years of purely solo gaming.
ckmiller wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
Especially amazing considering that he moved from Palo Alto to
Austin. Did all his friends move too?
jokethrowaway wrote 3 hours 26 min ago:
Plenty of people in tech moved from Silicon Valley to Austin to get
a better tax / quality of life deal, even in my social circle.
Remote working becoming widely available really made a difference.
I'm in a completely different part of the world, but for similar
reasons I ended up with a few friends in tech who moved to the same
part of the world - and I've also met similar profiles to ours,
attracted by the same reasons.
hawk_ wrote 2 hours 57 min ago:
Where did you move to if you don't mind me asking? The chasm
between SV tech comp and various "completely different part of
the world" is massive. Were you able to meet your employer in the
middle?
kentonv wrote 11 hours 11 min ago:
My junior high friends that I've been having parties with for 30
years live in Minneapolis (where I grew up). They fly out for New
Year's Eve each year.
But, in fact, some friends who regularly attended LAN parties in
the Bay Area moved to Austin around the same time we did. And some
others are also willing to travel for New Year's.
(Most parties are just local people, of course.)
MetaMalone wrote 12 hours 30 min ago:
So real. Most valuable component of this setup
wyclif wrote 12 hours 16 min ago:
Yeah, it's impressive that someone built this. But the most
impressive thing to me is that he has a group of friends who have
been doing LAN parties together for 30 years. I can't think of
anyone that I know that still does that.
Aeolun wrote 8 hours 58 min ago:
I do, but the group is nowhere near large enough (3-4 people)
that we need a house dedicated to itâ¦
johnohara wrote 14 hours 27 min ago:
I doubt it took 30 minutes for that Maine Coon to map the place, figure
out the cat doors, and hang out above the upstairs hdtv.
No crowds tho'. They steer clear. Probably why it doesn't show up in
any of the multi-player photos.
But the upstairs photo of Kenton was prime for the cat to make its way
along the back of the couch, gradually step down one paw at a time, and
join him nestled at his side.
I don't consider myself much of a cat person. But Maine Coons are
terrific animals.
zipmapfoldright wrote 14 hours 29 min ago:
Sweet setup! I'm curious if you use the machines for anything when it
isn't being used for a LAN party.
kentonv wrote 14 hours 22 min ago:
We'll turn on one or two to play games ourselves. E.g. my 5-year-old
is currently playing Portal 2 at the station next to me.
But otherwise, no, not really. At least not so far.
Fun story: When I built the house in Palo Alto in 2011, people asked
me if I was using the machines to mine Bitcoin. I said "What's
Bitcoin?" I should have been mining Bitcoin.
solardev wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
That's frigging awesome!! I really admire the thought and attention to
detail that went into this. Must've cost a good fortune, but what
better way to spend it having fun? Your friends seem like a blast too.
And also, thanks for Cloudflare Workers :) One of my favorite tech
tools of all time.
jillyboel wrote 14 hours 45 min ago:
Must be nice to be stinking rich
system2 wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
If your goal is to have what he has, you can make it happen in 5-10
years. A decent job or hardcore hustling (sell something), you can
make 200k a year and have all the things he has. Not that difficult.
findyourexit wrote 14 hours 54 min ago:
What an incredible setup! Really wonderful house overall, to be honest.
Aside from all of the extremely epic technology and whatnot - I have
got to say, the elevated view and outlook of your place is sensational.
Congratulations on putting together such a terrific place to raise a
family.
Oh and worth mentioning; I sincerely appreciated and enjoyed reading
your comprehensive Q&A section beyond the images (which themselves, had
really awesome annotations included). Thanks for sharing!
mclightning wrote 15 hours 2 min ago:
how do I join? :D are you guys hiring at cloudflare per chance?
asn007 wrote 15 hours 12 min ago:
That's a sweet LAN setup you've got! The only few things that rub me
the wrong way is the choice of peripherals and the lack of headsets.
Must be pretty noisy in here!
The tabletops also seems a bit too thin and wiggly for my taste, but,
honestly, for LAN parties with chill people you personally know â
it's ok
As for the actual host setup with a singular disk image â great job!
LAN gaming centres do something similar with their setups, with some
differences (a lot of centres either use Windows-based diskless
solutions that mount vhdx files as drives remotely over iSCSI, or use
ZFS-based snapshotting, which is my personal favourite)
But all in all, seems like my dream house :)
I own a chain of LAN gaming centres, so the feedback is definitely
skewered into the business perspective quite a bit
kentonv wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
I'm curious, what are the popular products/solutions that LAN centers
use for this?
I ended up putting together my own thing. I saw various products that
seemed like they might be what I wanted but they always seemed...
sketchy.
Moru wrote 2 hours 9 min ago:
We were running a small internet cafe with gaming computers around
2000 and I found some bootable solution that you installed on every
computer. It saved all changes temporarily and flushed everything
on reboot, starting from the clean install you prepared the day
before. Sadly there was no way of central storage possible with
that program. Would have loved to build this setup at that time but
money is always short.
asn007 wrote 14 hours 37 min ago:
There are a few, actually :)
CCBoot is a Windows Server-based diskless solution I mentioned, and
they also provide CCDisk, which can do "hybrid" mode â where
there is a small SSD in every PC with base OS pre-installed and
pre-configured, which then mounts an iSCSI game drive
GGRock is a fantastic product, in my opinion. It is pricy, but
where as CCBoot relies heavily on knowing it's inner workings,
GGRock is pretty much turnkey solution
There is also CCu Cloud Update, which I have heard of, but didn't
try myself, since they sell licenses only in Asia, from what I
remember
LANGAME Premium is an addon for LAN centre ERP system, which is
basically an ITAAS solution based on TrueNAS. Of all paid offerings
that one is my favourite so far â but you have to use their ERP
and actually run a business for it to be cost-effective
NetX provides an all-in-one (router, traffic filter and iSCSI
target) NUC-like server with pre-configured software on a
subscription basis. I am most skeptical of that just on the basis
that, from my research, two NVMe drives can't really handle the
load from a fully occupied 40+ machines LAN centre. Not for a long
time, at least
...and homebrew, of course. I myself am running a homebrew
ZFS-based system which I'm extremely happy with
In your case, I'd go with building my own thing too. Does not take
a lot of time if you know the inner workings and you have no
additional OPEX for your room :)
r1ch wrote 15 hours 20 min ago:
How did you deal with the length of the USB and display cables? I
thought after 5m or so things would start falling apart. Are there
active extenders and can they can handle 240+ Hz?
slumberlust wrote 15 hours 9 min ago:
Not OP, but he website addresses this:
|
| [1]: https://lanparty.house/#cable-latency |
|
r1ch wrote 12 hours 16 min ago:
Thanks, somehow I missed that entry.
kentonv wrote 15 hours 16 min ago:
Yes, Monoprice sells a brand called "SlimRun" which actually convert
the signal to fiber optic and can handle 100ft runs for USB,
DisplayPort, and HDMI. They are pricey but they work.
I haven't tried 240Hz, but I have successfully run 7680x2160 wide
screen at 120Hz (using HDMI), and 4k144Hz (using DisplayPort).
latentcall wrote 15 hours 35 min ago:
Younger me thinks this is really awesome. This was my DREAM during Halo
2 years. Kudos. The design, the hardware, the room itself. The house is
beautiful. The pictures and write ups are fantastic.
Feel free to ignore the next part of my comment:
Current me with lived experiences and knowledge of the world thinks
itâs a little disgusting. I donât think itâs your fault, or
youâre intending to do that. I donât think YOUâRE disgusting.
Just flaunting wealth in your own nerdy gamer way which many wealthy
people are wont to do. I donât blame you. If I could afford a 7
figure house and 150k for an adult playhouse I donât think Iâd say
no. The computer hardware alone being outdated and turning into e-waste
soon enough while people including children sleep and starve in the
streets just rubs me the wrong way.
Anybody remember Rich Kids of IG?
Anyway. I wouldnât feel right with myself if I didnât say
something. I donât think you did anything wrong, you are a product of
your environment as am I. I wonât check responses to this comment
just putting it out there is enough for me. Enjoy your LAN parties
dude!
redman25 wrote 15 hours 6 min ago:
Normally, Iâd be equally upset with excess but the fact that this
is somewhat of a community building thing is actually refreshing to
see from the wealthy (even if by community, it is just friends).
Itâs mild in comparison to the ultra rich. Jeff bezos, Larry
Ellison, and Elon musk have more wealth than half of America. That
fact is what we should truly be upset about. In comparison this is a
drop on the ocean.
nivethan wrote 15 hours 11 min ago:
> I wouldnât feel right with myself if I didnât say something.
Many people live with not feeling right with themselves.
mcdeltat wrote 15 hours 39 min ago:
Not the best use of resources considering we are in a housing crisis.
Another thing on the list of things wealthy people think they need...
hehehheh wrote 4 hours 52 min ago:
Flipside: they created more housing, in a place where people want it.
He even said prices in Austin are falling because of development.
marxisttemp wrote 15 hours 42 min ago:
Nice, can you guys help me with a down payment? I donât need dozens
of 4070s, just four walls and a roof
ARandomerDude wrote 12 hours 9 min ago:
I found your problem right here:
> marxisttemp
Get a job and quit blowing all your money on alcohol, and you'll be
amazed at how quickly you can get four walls and a roof. I had that
when I was still flipping burgers for a living.
ata_aman wrote 15 hours 43 min ago:
Beautiful. All of it. I love it when tech brings people together.
written-beyond wrote 15 hours 56 min ago:
The amount of thought that's gone into that cat lavatory really makes
me envy your belief in yourself. Here I am rewriting my dB schema 4
times.
stringtoint wrote 16 hours 5 min ago:
Where is the guy duck taped to the ceiling?
chipweinberger wrote 16 hours 9 min ago:
my favorite part is the cat walk with the doors to the rooms, how cool!
treehouse vibes.
wdr1 wrote 16 hours 11 min ago:
Has anyone done this on smaller scale? Say 4 or 8 stations?
We have space in our basement. And with our kids getting into
pre-teen/teen years, I think it'd be fun to have a place for lan
parties.
throwaway888889 wrote 12 hours 12 min ago:
Linus Sebastian from LTT has a series of videos about his in home
gaming centre with computers in his house mechanical room..
This is one of them ... But worth a look
|
| [1]: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aKRyZelOp7Y |
|
smolder wrote 2 hours 33 min ago:
The worst Linus... the one who pretends to understand computers on
youtube for a living.
djhworld wrote 16 hours 13 min ago:
Extraordinary and beautiful house, thanks for sharing.
Do you worry about the upgrade cycle on the hardware? Can't be fun
replacing the CPU in lots of machines :D
kentonv wrote 16 hours 7 min ago:
In 9 years in the Palo Alto house, the only things I ever upgraded
were GPU and RAM, and things seemed to work out fine. So I'm not too
worried about it, no.
That said, I do regret the motherboard choice, and I suppose if I
ever resort to replacing them then it's a fine time to upgrade
everything else. Hope it doesn't come to that though.
yapyap wrote 16 hours 15 min ago:
House, or room?
Sakos wrote 16 hours 35 min ago:
This is amazing. In today's world, I'm not sure what's more prohibitive
though. Finding 20 friends who play video games and would be into LAN
parties or being able to pay for this kind of setup.
valzam wrote 16 hours 37 min ago:
> I miss the old MX518.
Truely the peak of mouse design.
eajr wrote 12 hours 55 min ago:
Just so you know the 518 is back in production as of a couple years
ago with an updated sensor. It is by far the best mouse ever made,
still to this day.
throwaway888889 wrote 12 hours 9 min ago:
For me it is the MS intellimouse
kentonv wrote 12 hours 3 min ago:
Oh man that was a good one too.
throwaway888889 wrote 10 hours 26 min ago:
They started making it again a few years back. Then
discontinued... But you still might be able to find one :)
kentonv wrote 12 hours 15 min ago:
The new one is a lot more expensive but I might get it.
frakkingcylons wrote 16 hours 38 min ago:
Amazing setup, thanks for the write-up! My dream house if I was rich
would have a LAN party room like this (plus a mini fridge stocked with
Bawls Guarana). Stretch goal would be a movie theater like Brandon
Sanderson has in his lair.
laidoffamazon wrote 16 hours 43 min ago:
This is neat, but as a $NET shareholder and someone with another ~$1m
in net worth that can't afford to buy a house for at least another 6
years this makes me think we should significantly increase taxation.
sfeng wrote 5 hours 37 min ago:
If youâre a Cloudflare shareholder, Kenton has increased your net
worth quite a bit. He is one of the few people who is so unreasonably
capable he can and has changed the direction of a multibillion dollar
company single handedly. It sounds hyperbolic, but itâs not in this
particular case.
Iâm also fairly convinced he didnât capture one tenth of one
percent of the value he created, so Iâm not sure how anyone can
argue this is âunfairâ.
laidoffamazon wrote 5 hours 24 min ago:
As someone that was previously bullish on Workers but now fully
disillusioned with a barely positive cost basis on it right now I
disagree with this - if anything I feel burned for believing and
continuing to believe.
Either way, people like me arenât going to be able to capture
even a tenth of the success of joining Google in 2005 or buying a
$1m house in Palo Alto ~4 years after graduating (Iâm 6.5 years
out of graduating) because people like me arenât as human as the
folks that own this house.
newsclues wrote 1 hour 12 min ago:
"people like me arenât as human as the folks that own this
house"
What do you mean? People aren't human if they do not have a
certain level of wealth?
Seems to imply that you may think people with less wealth aren't
valuable or even human. What should people with less wealth than
you feel?
alecco wrote 3 hours 9 min ago:
Take it easy. These kind of thought won't help you. It's a rough
time out there but thing change. Our ancestors survived famines
and war. We should be able to manage this.
And yes, life is not fair. But don't waste it, it's finite.
0xDEAFBEAD wrote 6 hours 22 min ago:
Your net worth is far above the median. If taxes increase, you are
likely to lose wealth, not gain it.
segfaltnh wrote 1 hour 40 min ago:
Increases to income tax generally won't lower a wealthy persons
wealth, just the rate at which they can increase their wealth. They
already have the money, and it will keep paying dividends and
interest.
Unless you're talking about a new kind of wealth tax, but those
aren't particularly popular...
tptacek wrote 15 hours 17 min ago:
If you can't afford to buy a house, what you want is zoning reform,
not increased taxation.
(I want both, but I don't want more taxes to solve the housing
problem, because they won't.)
laidoffamazon wrote 15 hours 8 min ago:
I want both too, but neither is going to happen in the next 4-12
years so I can only fantasize about punitive measures
IAmGraydon wrote 15 hours 29 min ago:
You have $1M of net worth that isnât a house (and is therefore
likely to be liquid) and you canât afford to buy a house? Where and
how much?
laidoffamazon wrote 15 hours 14 min ago:
I spend about $3.2k a month for a studio apartment in an HCOL area.
I donât even own a car.
that_guy_iain wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
It sounds more like you can afford to buy a house, just not in
the area you want.
jmb99 wrote 14 hours 30 min ago:
I bought a house in Canada with a liquid net worth of $75k
(admittedly, 2 years ago, but still). 15 minute drive to a major
cityâs downtown, 0.3 acres, 3 bed 1 bath with an attached
garage. Is it the nicest house? No, but itâs a house, and Iâd
much rather pay a mortgage than rent.
With a net worth of a million USD, I could buy a house pretty
much anywhere in this country, comfortably, and weâre known to
have one of the highest costs of living in major cities in the
western world. If you move almost literally anywhere from where
you currently live, you can definitely afford a house.
bigstrat2003 wrote 15 hours 2 min ago:
You need to move, yesterday. Yes, moving sucks. No, ideally you
wouldn't have to. But at the end of the day you are just plain
shooting yourself in the foot if you continue to live in a place
that absurdly expensive.
Like dude, you could buy an awesome house in just about any other
part of the country if you truly have $1m in liquid wealth. You
have options to own a house, you just have to act on them.
kelnos wrote 3 hours 41 min ago:
Some people value other things than homeownership.
Some people value living in their area (regardless of what it
costs) for reasons that make moving undesirable.
47282847 wrote 10 hours 42 min ago:
Whatâs this fixation on house ownership? It doesnât make
sense rationally. Stock markets always perform better, easily
beating ownership and the hassle and associated risks of
managing property.
mikem170 wrote 8 hours 36 min ago:
One factor: It's an investment that you can get for 20% down,
or less. You can't borrow that much to gamble in the stock
market. All is well as long as the value of the house doesn't
go down.
People like the idea of making money. They are used to real
estate always increasing in value.
We'll see what happens as boomer demand ages out.
kasey_junk wrote 1 hour 3 min ago:
And the loan is heavily subsidized by the federal
government (and frequently by other governments as well).
US policy is to make real estate a fundamental part of
Americans wealth. Itâs worked! Since the policy started
weâve gone from hovering in the 40% homeownership rate to
hovering in the mid 60s.
Itâs also made housing expensive and homogeneous.
fragmede wrote 8 hours 50 min ago:
Because you can build things like the house we're commenting
on. If that's not your thing that's totally fine, but
sometimes people want to spend way their hard earned money on
adapting their living situation to suit their desires.
If I'm going to sink that kind of time/money/effort into
building a thing, I don't want a landlord to be able to come
in and take it away from me with some legal loophole or by
raising my rent.
compiler-devel wrote 15 hours 38 min ago:
When have increased taxes directly contributed to your take home pay?
wiredfool wrote 36 min ago:
When health insurance is 10x cheaper because of it.
lostlogin wrote 14 hours 21 min ago:
How would that even be possible? Presumably some people get a top
up if they are on a tiny wage, but âdirect contribution to take
home payâ really isnât the point of tax. It also sounds a
fairly inefficient use of money.
Have I missed something in this conversation?
compiler-devel wrote 13 hours 38 min ago:
Yes you have missed something but donât worry about it.
IAmGraydon wrote 15 hours 29 min ago:
It doesnât. Theyâre just expressing their jealousy in a thinly
veiled and highly embarrassing way.
compiler-devel wrote 15 hours 15 min ago:
It truly is embarrassing. Imagine seeing something and thinking,
"how can I get the government to forcefully take some of that for
my benefit?"
alchemist1e9 wrote 10 hours 53 min ago:
Absolutely embarrassing and a real life demonstration of a
famous quote:
âI have never understood why it is âgreedâ to want to
keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take
somebody elseâs money.â
stemlord wrote 10 hours 26 min ago:
To be fair OP's website explains that most of the money isn't
earned income. I'm happy for them though
compiler-devel wrote 1 min ago:
What do you mean by âisnât earned incomeâ ?
laidoffamazon wrote 15 hours 12 min ago:
Itâs not for my benefit, I just want to see Stanford grads
get punished. I could get more punitive but I keep that for
yelling at strangers in person.
kentonv wrote 14 hours 55 min ago:
Where did the Stanford thing come from? I went to the
University of Minnesota.
trelane wrote 10 hours 25 min ago:
Any chance you have a gopher server running there then?
laidoffamazon wrote 15 hours 18 min ago:
Itâs not very thinly veiled
kristianp wrote 16 hours 17 min ago:
What's a $NET shareholder?
theideaofcoffee wrote 16 hours 2 min ago:
Itâs someone who owns shares in Cloudflare (their market ticker
being âNETâ), but everyone here thinks theyâre a financial
wonk when talking about big tech and finance so they insist on
making it opaque like that. Itâs a dumb and cringey trend. Just
say âas a Cloudflare shareholderâ, I promise you the six bytes
you save wonât be missed!
GlacierFox wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
But then I wouldn't know how utterly badass this guy is, shooting
around those sweet ticker designations that all us plebs wouldn't
recognise.
laidoffamazon wrote 16 hours 6 min ago:
A somewhat small subset of my net worth is Cloudflare, which has
the ticker symbol $NET
crooked-v wrote 16 hours 28 min ago:
Housing price issues in the US are fundamentally the result of every
major city making it expensive or impossible to actually build enough
housing. Changing taxes (in either direction) really wouldn't move
the needle at all. What's needed are local zoning changes and
significant revamps of permitting and approval processes to remove
endless discretionary roadblocks from anyone who doesn't like medium
density housing.
ClassyJacket wrote 10 hours 27 min ago:
Yep. The fact that in most places in the US it's illegal to build
apartments above shops is insane. That's the norm in the UK.
mschuster91 wrote 3 hours 25 min ago:
It's in Germany too, but recently it's become the norm for
new-rich people to buy or rent these apartments and then sue the
shop and especially bar owners for noise violations.
Not allowing that kind of mixed usage in the first place
completely cuts away all that crap.
OJFord wrote 2 hours 31 min ago:
Not to say there's not restaurants/bars open just as late or
noisy, but fwiw I would say typically a pub in the UK would be
the whole (vertical) building - rooms upstairs for staff or
B&B, if not more seating for pub restaurant.
voisin wrote 11 hours 5 min ago:
> fundamentally the result of every major city making it expensive
or impossible to actually build enough housing
ZIRP certainly had something to do with this too! Donât overlook
ridiculous fiscal and monetary policy.
cluckindan wrote 15 hours 45 min ago:
No.
The global housing crisis is the result of international organised
crime owning or operating most of the large construction
conglomerates, using real estate as a fiat currency to wash the
proceeds from all their illicit business, and (org crime infested)
private equity companies cashing in on the former situation,
pumping assets by buying up available real estate just to make it
unavailable.
CRIME is the real reason worldwide for people not being able to
afford a house.
crooked-v wrote 15 hours 5 min ago:
> using real estate as a fiat currency
Even if we take your premise as a given, the entire reason real
estate is so valuable is that there isn't enough housing in the
first place. Real estate is, by its nature, a bad investment;
it's only the scarcity of it that makes the value continue to go
up exponentially.
> buying up available real estate just to make it unavailable
There isn't actually any available housing in the first place, at
the point of cities even approving projects, compared to the
number of people who need housing. That's the problem. The most
extreme example is San Francisco, where as of this July the
entire city had approved only 16 housing units [1] out of an
already comically poor goal of only about 10,000 housing units
per year.
|
| [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/san-francisco-only-agreed-build... |
|
qeternity wrote 15 hours 27 min ago:
This is absurd. Does it happen? Yes. But this is not the primary
driver.
We turned housing into retirement funds. The median family's
wealth is their primary residence. We cannot have these assets
depreciate in nominal terms for this reason, and we actually need
them to appreciate in real terms for people to have a nest egg.
It's awful, but it's the truth.
blitzar wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
The median family's wealth is 0.6 * {their primary residence}.
echoangle wrote 16 hours 53 min ago:
This is so cool.
But the keyboard disturbed me, wouldnât you at least want a
mechanical keyboard?
> Keyboard: Logitech K120 Wired â The world's cheapest keyboard at
$13 a pop. Works perfectly fine for all gaming needs.
I canât imagine playing stuff like overwatch on a membrane office
keyboard for $13 when having spent more than 100k on the setup.
Especially when cheap mechanical keyboards are not that much more
expensive either.
fuzzy2 wrote 1 hour 2 min ago:
Mechanical keyboards aren't automatically great or durable. I've had
various die on me. One from sitting in a drawer, probably corrosion.
And it's not even always the keys/switches, electronics can degrade
too and firmware can be horrendously buggy.
stevage wrote 15 hours 51 min ago:
The noise of a room full of mechanical keyboards, dear god.
Me, I bought a mechanical keyboard but I despise it. Switched to a
Logitech Keys.
Sohcahtoa82 wrote 15 hours 25 min ago:
Not all mechanical keyboards are noisy.
I use TTC Silent Bluish White switches which produce a muted
"thock" sound, rather than the loud "clickety-clack" that you're
probably thinking of. They're only slightly louder than a typical
membrane keyboard.
stevage wrote 14 hours 41 min ago:
True. Only 98% of mechanical keyboards are noisy.
smolder wrote 3 hours 7 min ago:
Nope, not even close. Mainly just the ones with clicky (e.g.
mx-blue, less so mx-brown) switches. It's an option but not a
requirement, and honestly not that common for gaming-oriented
ones, which typically have linear non-clicky switches, which
can be quieter than membrane buttons, even. I like the
semi-clicky brown ones for typing but haven't used them for
years for noise reasons. My mechanical KBs have generally
always had rubber o-rings that dampen the sound from bottoming
out, too, a fairly common feature.
Apparently, based on your earlier post, you bought the noisy
kind. That's on you.
ics wrote 16 hours 38 min ago:
For starters, it's a generic choice that's likely similar to what
many used in school computer labs. No bikeshedding over which type of
switches to get; that can be a very taste-specific choice. I might
have missed it but wonder if there are any house rules against
bringing your own mouse/keyboard.
Edit: kentonv replied answered before I hit submit. BYOK/M if you
want, nice.
kentonv wrote 16 hours 46 min ago:
Honestly I've never felt it made any difference to me when gaming. I
would never code on such a keyboard but for the old WASD it seems
fine.
That said, guests are welcome to bring any peripherals they want.
There's a USB hub at each station to plug stuff in.
TheAceOfHearts wrote 15 hours 10 min ago:
I guess it depends on what sort of games you're playing, but isn't
it possible for the lack of n-key rollover to be a problem? My
understanding is that many of these keyboards fail to register
inputs if too many keys are pressed at the same time.
smolder wrote 2 hours 40 min ago:
Yes, without an n-key rollover keyboard you run into situations
where perhaps running diagonally, plus reloading or throwing a
grenade won't register the last button press. (E.g. Shift + W + D
+ R/G) It's kind of infuriating to run into that problem on
cheapo keyboards that have it.
michaelt wrote 3 hours 17 min ago:
Generally it's fine - in the 1990s barely anyone had a mechanical
keyboard. Instead, game developers learned to test their products
on the most common keyboard models. That's why so many games use
WASD+Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Space and a handful of other keys in that
area.
It doesn't look like they're hoping to play split-screen fighting
games with both players using the same keyboard :)
Aeolun wrote 8 hours 5 min ago:
Edit: I was wrong.
> I recall reading something like 13 keys, and wondering what
kind of lunatic tries to press 13 buttons at the same time.
My recollection was wrong though, and most keyboards support at
least two keys held down at the same time (plus shift/alt/ctrl).
kentonv wrote 14 hours 52 min ago:
Hmm, I've never had an issue with this.
We generally don't play competitively but we do play fast-paced
FPS and such and I just don't recall this ever having come up.
(We had the same keyboards in the last house FWIW.)
ikrenji wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
he said they don't play competitive games.
iwontberude wrote 16 hours 54 min ago:
Such a cool house, too bad itâs in Texas
deadbabe wrote 16 hours 55 min ago:
Itâs one thing to build a house like this, if you can actually host a
LAN party with friends and max out occupancy at every game station you
are rich in life.
xyst wrote 17 hours 2 min ago:
Iâm surprised people still have LAN parties.
My lan parties were more adhoc. Plan to play at some dudes/gals house,
bring pcs/laptops/consoles and other gear, run cat5 cable between
rooms, hook them up to some shitty switch and go to town. Many hours of
sweaty gameplay. Piss off the neighbors. Trip a few circuit breakers.
This âlan partyâ has such a corporate feel to it. Almost reminds me
of a typical work office. Just what I need after grinding it for 5 hrs
and commuting home for another 1-2 hr â to experience the work
environment again!
Iâm actually more interested in the dedicated cat walk and doors that
lead into various rooms.
Multiplayer wrote 17 hours 3 min ago:
As the former proprietor of LanParty.com (which I mistakenly included
in a sale to IGN) I must salute you. The absolute genius of the
provided lan equipment and particularly the management thereof is an
inspiration.
I think the lack of any standing offerings of variations of Quake is a
glaring mistake but easily rectified. :)
It's really heartening to see lan gaming continued and offered in such
a way that the amount of hassle and setup is minimized and the gaming
is maximized. We spent far too much time in the 90's and 2000's
dealing with driver issues, etc etc. Bravo.
zamalek wrote 9 hours 35 min ago:
I remember our biggest issue being IP addresses. We had no router, or
expertise, so we were at the whims of automatic addresses (254.x...
as far as I recall?). Good times.
albertzeyer wrote 2 hours 45 min ago:
I remember the first time, we bought some 10BASE2 ethernet cards
and BNC connector cables, and spend hours to figure out why it does
not work, only then to learn the next day that we also need cable
end terminators (if I remember that correctly). But then it worked
and we had lots of fun.
Moru wrote 2 hours 15 min ago:
Yes, you need terminators for them :-)
animal531 wrote 3 hours 38 min ago:
Oof. Back in the day friends and I would get together to LAN and
the first few hours would just be fiddling with network cards,
cables, terminators and software.
There was always someone who would just be totally unable to
connect with someone else.
mattbee wrote 4 hours 54 min ago:
I've definitely been to a LAN party where IP addresses were written
on clothes pegs by the entrance. You take a peg on your way in,
clip it to your ethernet cable, configure that IP statically!
hunter2_ wrote 6 hours 55 min ago:
Windows will self-assign from 169.254/16 in the absence of a DHCP
server.
tossandthrow wrote 3 hours 46 min ago:
Also 15 years ago?
Symbiote wrote 2 hours 50 min ago:
Yes.
The idea was specified in 2005, and there's a related question
about Windows using these addresses in 2011 [1]. I haven't
tried to find older evidence.
|
| [1]: https://superuser.com/questions/238625/why-is-windows-... |
|
leptons wrote 13 hours 53 min ago:
Quake is still so much fun. Been playing for years with a group and
it doesn't get old.
ethbr1 wrote 13 hours 38 min ago:
What changes after years of playing? I assume everyone has every
inch of the maps memorized?
leptons wrote 10 hours 6 min ago:
>What changes after years of playing?
New ways to exploit the physics to do things your opponents don't
expect and can't easily reproduce. As the skill level of regular
players increases, I always look for new ways to approach the
maps.
system2 wrote 9 hours 0 min ago:
Download it from tastyspleen.com and play online too. I play
quake2 online almost daily.
Ringz wrote 6 hours 37 min ago:
Domain for sale?
pentagrama wrote 5 hours 36 min ago:
I think it may be
|
| [1]: http://tastyspleen.net/ |
|
RulerOf wrote 17 hours 9 min ago:
> I've never heard of anyone else having done anything like this. This
surprises me! But, surely, if someone else did it, someone would have
told me about it? If you know of another, please let me know!
I never had the tenacity to consider my build "finished," and
definitely didn't have your budget, but I built a 5-player room[1] for
DotA 2 back in 2013.
I got really lucky with hardware selection and ended up fighting with
various bugs over the years... diagnosing a broken video card was an
exercise in frustration because the virtualization layer made BSODs
impossible to see.
I went with local disk-per-VM because latency matters more than
throughput, and I'd been doing iSCSI boot for such a long time that I
was intimately familiar with the downsides.
I love your setup (thanks for taking the time to share this BTW) and
would love to know if you ever get the local CoW working.
My only tech-related comment is that I will also confirm that those 10G
cards are indeed trash, and would humbly suggest an Intel-based eBay
special. You could still load iPXE (I assume you're using it) from the
onboard NIC, continue using it for WoL, but shift the netboot over to
the add-in card via a script, and probably get better stability and
performance.
[1]
|
| [1]: https://imgur.com/a/4x4-four-desktops-one-system-kWyH4 |
|
kentonv wrote 16 hours 51 min ago:
Hah, you really did the VM thing? A lot of people have suggested that
to me but I didn't think it'd actually work. Pretty cool!
Yeah I'm pretty sure my onboard 10G Marvell AQtion ethernet is the
source of most of my stability woes. About half the time any of these
machines boot up, Windows bluescreens within the first couple
minutes, and I think it has something to do with the iSCSI service
crashing. Never had trouble in the old house where the machines had
1G network -- but load times were painful.
Luckily if the machines don't crash in the first couple minutes, then
they settle down and work fine...
Yeah I could get higher-quality 10G cards and put them in all the
machines but they seem expensive...
amluto wrote 3 hours 42 min ago:
Just buy used 10G hardware from an HFT firm :). Seriously, though,
10G gear is cheap these days.
I bet one could put an unreasonable amount of effort into
convincing an Nvidia Bluefield card to pretend to be a disk well
enough to get Windows to mount it. I imagine that AWS is doing
something along those lines too, but with more cheap chips and less
Nvidia markupâ¦
There has got to be a way to convince Windows to do an overlay
block device that involves magic words like âthin
provisioningâ. But two seconds of searching didnât find it.
Every self-respecting OS (Linux, FreeBSD, etc) has had this
capability for decades, of course. Amusingly, AFAICT, major clouds
also mostly lack this capability â performance of the obvious
solution in AWS (boot everything off an AMI) is notoriously poorly
performing.
tarasglek wrote 4 hours 37 min ago:
I am not a gamer, but I found that [1] latency when streaming from
my server to mbp is lower than that of my projector directly
connected to said server.
Might be easier to just get a beefy server with gpu passthrough
than fight 10gbe drivers on 10 machines. Amd cards seem to work
amazing for passthrough.
|
| [1]: https://moonlight-stream.org/ |
|
ThatPlayer wrote 5 hours 9 min ago:
I've done a multi-seat gaming VM back in the day too. I don't think
I'd want to do it again. Assigning hotplug USB devices was a pain:
I mostly wanted unique USB devices per computer to easily figure
which device was which. Though nowadays I would probably use a thin
client Raspberry Pi running Moonlight to do it cheaply.
I think another issue is the limited amount of PCI-E lanes now that
HEDT is dead. I picked up a 5930k for my build at the time for its
40 PCI-E lanes. But now consumer CPUs basically max out at 20-24
lanes.
Also with the best CPUs for gaming nowadays being AMD's X3D series
because of its additional L3 cache, I wonder about the performance
hit with 2 different VMs fighting for cache. Maybe the rumored
9950X3D will have 2 3D caches and you'd be able to pin the VMs to
each CPU cores/cache. The 7950X3D had 3D cache only on half of its
cores, so games generally performed better pinned to only those
cores.
So with only 2-3 VMs/PC, and you still needing a GPU for each VM
which are the most expensive part anyway, I'd pay a bit more to do
it without VMs. The only way I'd be interested in multiseat VM
gaming again would be if I could utilize GPU virtualization: split
up a single GPU into many VMs. But like you say in the article
that's usually been limited to enterprise hardware. And even then
it'd be interesting only for the flexibility, being able to run 1
high-end GPU for when I'm not having a party.
amluto wrote 3 hours 54 min ago:
If youâre on an Intel chip that supports âResource
Director,â you can assign most of your cache to a VM. I have no
idea whether AMD can do this. Iâve also never done it, and I
donât know how well KVM supports it.
justmarc wrote 6 hours 39 min ago:
You can get used ones super cheap on ebay. The same applies to RAM,
CPUs and other parts.
No need to buy new for most computing equipment unless you're
looking for the absolute latest and greatest.
murderfs wrote 11 hours 58 min ago:
Yeah, gaming in a VM is fairly easy and reliable nowadays (the
keyword to google for is VFIO). The cost savings is pretty
substantial from consolidating multiple machines into one bigger
machine. Unfortunately, there's an increasing number of games with
anticheat that looks for being inside a VM.
> onboard 10G Marvell AQtion ethernet
I had similar problems with an Aquantia 10GbE NIC (which AQtion
appears to be the rebranded name for, post-acquisition by Marvell),
and it turned out to be the network chip overheating because it was
poorly thermally bonded to a VRM heatsink that defaulted to turning
on at something like 90C. Adding a thicker thermal pad and setting
the VRM fan to always be on at 30% solved my problems.
kentonv wrote 11 hours 41 min ago:
Interesting! I sure hope that's not my problem because I uhhh
really don't want to open up 20 machines to try to fix that.
I think it probably isn't the same problem, though, because I
only have stability issues at initial startup. If it boots and
doesn't BSOD in the first five minutes then it's fine... even
through heavy network and disk use (like installing updates).
tinco wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
It's been a couple years, but when I built our in-office render
farm for my previous company I also got motherboards with built-in
10G because they needed 4GPU's and there simply no more PCIe slots
left. There were so many connectivity issues, but eventually it was
solved when we replaced the switches. When I first built the farm
there was only one brand that sold cheap 10gbit ethernet switches,
but a couple years later finally ubiquiti started making them as
well and I think now all of the semi-pro brands sell 10gbit
switches. Since we swapped to ubiquiti switches we had no more
connectivity issues, not even with the cheap 10G interfaces.
The good intel 10G cards were not expensive at all by the way, I
bought them for later additions, and they were cheaper than the
premium we paid for the money-gamer motherboards that included 10G
cards that I saw you were unhappy about too.
jmb99 wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
> Hah, you really did the VM thing? A lot of people have suggested
that to me but I didn't think it'd actually work. Pretty cool!
Another data point that it is indeed possible. I had a dual Xeon
E5-2690 v2 setup with two RX 580 8GB cards passed through to
separate VMs, and with memory and CPU pinning it was a surprisingly
resilient setup. 150+ FPS in CSGO with decent 1% lows (like 120 if
I remember correctly?) which was fine since I only had 60Hz
monitors. I have a Threadripper workstation now, I should test out
to see what kind of performance I can get out of that for VM
gaming...
> Yeah I could get higher-quality 10G cards and put them in all the
machines but they seem expensive...
I have had very good luck with Intel X540 cards. $20-40 on eBay,
and thereâs hundreds (if not thousands) available. Theyâre
plug-and-play on any modern Linux, but need an Intel driver on
windows if I remember correctly. Iâve never had one die and
Iâve never experienced a crash or network dropout in the 9 years
Iâve been running them. The Marvell chipset just seems terrible,
unfortunately - Iâve had problems with it on multiple different
cards and motherboards on every OS under the sun.
toast0 wrote 15 hours 26 min ago:
> Yeah I could get higher-quality 10G cards and put them in all the
machines but they seem expensive...
Bulk buying is probably hard, but ex-enterprise Intel 10G on eBay
tends to be pretty inexpensive. Dual spf+ x520 cards are regularly
available for $10. Dual 10g-base-t x540 cards run a bit more, with
more variance, $15-$25. No 2.5/5Gb support, but my 10g network
equipment can't do those speeds either, so no big deal. These are
almost all x8 cards, so you need a slot that can accomidate them,
but x4 electrical should be fine (I've seen reports that some
enterprise gear has trouble working properly in x1/x4 slots beyond
bandwidth restrictions which shouldn't be a problem; if a dual port
card needs x8 and you only have x4 and only use a single port, that
should be fine)
I think all of mine can pxeboot, but sometimes you have to fiddle
with the eeprom tools, and they might be legacy only, no uefi pxe,
but that's fine for me.
And you usually have to be ok with running them with no brackets,
cause they usually come with low profile brackets only.
vueko wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
+1 ebay x520 cards. My entire 10g sfp+ home network runs on a
bunch of x520s, fs.com DACs/AOCs, Mikrotik switches, and an old
desktop running FreeBSD with a few x520s in it as the core
router. Very very cheap to assemble and has been absolutely
bulletproof. IME at this point in time the ixgbe driver is
extremely stable.
x520s with full-height brackets do exist (I have a box full of
them), but you may pay like $3-5/ea more than the more common
lo-pro bracket ones. If you're willing to pop the bracket off,
you can also find full-height brackets standalone and install
your own.
Also, in general: in my experience avoiding 10gbe rj45 is very
worthwhile. More expensive, more power consumption, more heat
generation. If you can stick a sfp+ card in something, do it. IMO
10gbe rj45 is only worthwhile when you've got a device that
supports it but can't easily take a pcie nic, like some intel
NUCs.
toast0 wrote 13 hours 45 min ago:
sfp+ is clearly cheaper, and less heat/power, but I've got
cat5e in the walls and between my house and detached garage, so
I've got to use 10g-baseT to get between the garage and the
house, and up to my office from the basement. At my two
network closet areas, I use sfp+ for servers.
I think my muni fiber install happening this week might have a
10G-baseT handoff, and I've got a port for that open on my
switch in the garage. If that works out, that will be neat, but
I'll need to upgrade some more stuff to make full use of that.
vueko wrote 12 hours 3 min ago:
Oh true, good point, being wired for ethernet is another
valid usecase. I'm lucky in that my ONT is just a commodity
Nokia switch I can slap any sfp+ form factor transceiver I
want in the appropriate port of for the connection to the
router, so in my case 10gbe is truly banishable to the
devices I can't get a pcie card into. I'm still in the phase
of masking taping cables to the ceiling instead of doing real
wall pulls, but when I do get around to that I feel like I'm
going to pick up an aliexpress fiber splicer and pull
single-mode fiber to futureproof it and make sure I never
have to deal with pulls again (and not be stuck on an old
ethernet standard in the magical future where I can get a
100gbit wan link).
kridsdale3 wrote 16 hours 10 min ago:
I'm building out a 10G LAN in my house (8k VR video files are
ludicrously enormous) and while it's mostly Mac, where I use
Thunderbolt to SFP fiber adapters, for my Windows PC I'm looking
around at what PCI options to get, and haven't pulled the trigger.
If you make a decision on a 10G card (SFP or ethernet) I'd like to
hear what you picked.
timc3 wrote 8 hours 21 min ago:
If its SFP then intel, they have seem to have good ability to go
into power saving states. My mellanox cards donât.
10gbase-t ethernet is harder to pick, a lot of those cards run
incredibly hot particularly the ones that expect server style
cooling. Heard bad things about all of them.
Also heard that Windows has a hard time reaching 10G anyway.
murderfs wrote 11 hours 48 min ago:
You can get pretty cheap 10GBASE-T NICs on ebay. I've had pretty
good success with this abomination, a server-pull NIC with an HP
proprietary physical interface plugged into an adapter to PCI-E:
|
| [1]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/144151881516 |
|
syntaxing wrote 17 hours 10 min ago:
> Jade and I needed a bigger house, but we really could not afford to
buy (much less build) anything bigger in Palo Alto.
Iâm really surprised about this, really shows how ludicrous the
housing market is in the Bay Area. How high does your income need to be
to afford a bigger house?!
toast0 wrote 13 hours 24 min ago:
One issue with wanting a big house in Palo Alto is that most of the
lots there are fairly small. There's not that many lots that can
accomodate a larger home, so at best there's not many options, and
sometimes there are none.
valzam wrote 16 hours 45 min ago:
Also considering 1400 sq ft (130 sq m) too small to raise a family is
peak American... That's bigger than 99.9% of apartments people live
in in Europe and raise a family just fine.
Mistletoe wrote 11 hours 11 min ago:
3/4 of Americans are overweight or obese now. We need a lot of
room.
valzam wrote 13 hours 20 min ago:
In fact, calling 1400 sq ft a bachelor pad and then complaining
about housing is unaffordable there is hilarious on many levels.
maccard wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
I live in what would be considered a large house in the UK and
itâs marginally larger than that!
sevg wrote 16 hours 24 min ago:
I suppose if you want to raise a family AND have a huge dedicated
lan party area, then maybe 130 sqm isn't enough.
But I do agree with you. We live in a 4 bedroom detached house
approx 120 sqm and this is plenty of space for a family. In fact,
it's above average space out of all the families I know...
Tijdreiziger wrote 16 hours 31 min ago:
At first, my jaw was open looking at the photos.
Then I remembered⦠oh yeah, everything is bigger in America
(especially in Texas)!
hk1337 wrote 17 hours 10 min ago:
> Normally, maintaining twelve machines used by random guests would
have two huge problems:
Maybe you did this with your other house but I would have thought
guests would bring their own computer to a LAN party. All you have to
do is provide the space and network capability?
kentonv wrote 17 hours 6 min ago:
See:
|
| [1]: https://lanparty.house/#why-build-in |
|
amatecha wrote 17 hours 10 min ago:
Wow, this is beyond badass. Not only is the LAN and home network setup
top-notch, that location is excellent too - what a view! Congrats on
the amazing LAN setup and such a fun place to enjoy some gaming with
your friends & family. Truly worthy of some envy, that's for sure :)
Looks like it was a good chunk of work, but 110% worth it!
eertami wrote 17 hours 19 min ago:
The biggest surprise for me was seeing the desks with no mouse pads (or
if you wanted to build it into the cabinet you'd probably want to stick
down a desk pad).
But I also in my circles everyone takes their own
keyboard/mouse/pad/headphones as those are the things it's hard to
adjust to - admittedly my priorities could be completely different.
kentonv wrote 17 hours 15 min ago:
I mostly haven't used a mouse pad in decades... until recently. I now
have a mouse pad on my main work desk because the wood where my mouse
was kept attracting weird black spots. They were easy to clean off
but weirded me out. And I guess it would be sad if I ended up with a
permanent wear spot...
But I think the LAN parties don't really happen often enough to cause
much wear. In 10 years at the old place no one used mouse pads and it
was never an issue.
buildsjets wrote 16 hours 56 min ago:
May I recommend the 3M Precise Mouse Pad with Repositionable
Adhesive Backing? Dumb name, good product.
|
| [1]: https://www.amazon.com/3M-Precise-Repositionable-Adhesive-... |
|
zexodus wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
> the wood where my mouse was kept attracting weird black spots
Have the same issue, but can't subscribe to mousepads. I believe
that's dust getting in the crevices of the wood.
hk1337 wrote 17 hours 7 min ago:
Or oils from your hand, perhaps?
Symbiote wrote 17 hours 20 min ago:
> [High AC cost.] Perhaps we have too many windows letting in too much
sunlight...
My office has automatic blinds that open and close according to some
climate control system. The blinds are within the double glazing, so
they can't be damaged by weather (or cats). The nice version for a
home would be something like [1].
I'm sure the owner could program the automation so they only change
position if no-one is in the room. There's no point having sunlight
streaming into an empty room.
|
| [1]: https://www.betweenglassblinds.co.uk/ |
|
jillyboel wrote 14 hours 11 min ago:
That's awesome! Unfortunately it's all "request a quote". Can you
shed some light on how much you paid?
Symbiote wrote 3 hours 35 min ago:
Sorry, by "my office" I meant the building my employer owns.
There were several companies when I searched for "shutters OR
blinds inside double glazing".
necovek wrote 16 hours 43 min ago:
In the winter in a normal European/northern US climate, you probably
want sunlight streaming into an empty room to reduce the heating
bill.
Possibly never in Austin, TX: I am not too privy to the temperatures
it gets down to in the winter, though heating was brought up too.
kentonv wrote 17 hours 9 min ago:
Yeah good idea. We do have electric shades on many of the windows...
I just need to rig up some software control of them. I suppose as an
experiment I could leave them all down for a day and see how much
power it saves. The shades are on the inside of the glass, but
light-colored, so should reflect back a fair amount of light.
teruakohatu wrote 17 hours 21 min ago:
This is truely living the dream, well done mate! It is indeed crazy
that cabinetry costs the same as the technology.
How does the cat restroom exhaust work? Always on or does it have a
sensor?
Do the cat doors prevent sound getting into the kids' rooms from the
living room?
kentonv wrote 17 hours 14 min ago:
The cat room fans are standard bathroom fans. At present we just
leave them on all the time -- you can see the switches taped down in
the photos. I suppose it might be a good idea to rig up a sensor...
teruakohatu wrote 12 hours 4 min ago:
A sensor would be easy enough, there are simple non-smart sensor
fan timer that will activate a fan for a programable time.
devenson wrote 15 hours 19 min ago:
Constant fans are sucking outside air into your house. Could be
part of your Heat/AC efficiency problem mentioned in your post. A
timer to run every 10th minute would be a simple improvement.
kentonv wrote 14 hours 51 min ago:
Yeah that's a good point, I should turn off the fans for a day
and see if it changes the power use...
hunter2_ wrote 17 hours 9 min ago:
Might be able to use a flipper zero as the sensor, if the cats are
chipped. Then you'll have data to catch any unusual usage, like a
urinary blockage, before it becomes a serious problem! At that
point you're a smart switch and Home Assistant script away from fan
control.
ahaucnx wrote 15 hours 57 min ago:
I would recommend to use an TVOC sensor that detects smell very
easily and then automatically switch on a fan. Could be a fun
project.
Just need:
- TVOC sensor like the SGP41
- ESP32 microcontroller
- Electric Relay
amluto wrote 2 hours 57 min ago:
Iâm highly unimpressed by my couple of SGP41 sensors, but
they would probably work for this application.
teruakohatu wrote 12 hours 5 min ago:
Interesting idea. Do TVOC respond with enough signal to low
level aromatics verses all the particles from cooking or
pollution?
kentonv wrote 16 hours 48 min ago:
Garply had a blockage once and he did a remarkably good job of
communicating the problem to us directly!
allenrb wrote 10 hours 19 min ago:
As a fellow cat person, I feel pretty confident interpreting
whatâs being implied here. :-)
Beautiful home and contents, btw! It seems expensive but more
than a few folks would have spent the same money on ânicer
marbleâ or something.
kentonv wrote 10 hours 7 min ago:
Heh, I actively dislike "nice marble" or anything that just
looks expensive without providing any functional benefit.
w-m wrote 17 hours 31 min ago:
Wait, why do you have the same living room as Bojack Horseman?
kentonv wrote 17 hours 29 min ago:
Lol, never seen it before, but looking now, yeah it looks kinda
similar!
gloflo wrote 17 hours 35 min ago:
I wish I was rich too.
tptacek wrote 17 hours 32 min ago:
He seems like he has a really good attitude about it.
pixelatedindex wrote 2 hours 8 min ago:
I too would have a great attitude if I had that much money lol
mewse-hn wrote 17 hours 48 min ago:
Beautiful house, great ideas, love the stow-away workstations -- no
patch panel in the network rack facepalm
srbloom wrote 17 hours 52 min ago:
This is super freaking cool. I'm curious how you feel about Austin vs
Bay Area in terms of general quality of life, culture, things like
that?
frakkingcylons wrote 15 hours 0 min ago:
Related to culture, I moved to Austin in 2012 and that was the first
time I saw a restaurant advertising that their water had no fluoride.
alchemist1e9 wrote 10 hours 45 min ago:
I suspect it will be interesting when people all realize too much
fluoride is very bad and isnât actually disinformation. Itâs
obviously not an intentional conspiracy to make people dumb but it
happens to be outdated science to fluoridate city water at levels
we do in the US.
blackqueeriroh wrote 7 hours 5 min ago:
This is factually incorrect. In fact recent studies show that up
to 25% of cavities are still prevented by fluoridating water. On
top of that, multiple Canadian cities are adding fluoride back in
their water after 10 years of having it removed because of
excellent evidence that the lack of fluoridation in the water is
what led to the increase in cavities in those cities, since they
had neighboring cities who kept fluoride in the water during the
same period
defrost wrote 6 hours 44 min ago:
It's factually correct that too much fluoride is correlated
with decreased average IQ.
By "too much" a factor of > 10x western safe levels is meant
and by "correlated with" is meant a slew of other heavy metals
are generally present.
This comes from studies that look at places in China, in
Africa, and elsewhere that have unusally high levels of
fluoride and other elements naturally occurring in water or as
a by product of other industrial processing going on.
Where the problem lies is in the "fill in the missing line"
extrapolations that the anti-fluoride folk do to "conclude"
that if really high levels of stuff in water makes you stupid
and affects your health then it surely must follow that small
amounts make you a bit stupid and a bit unhealthy.
This is despite no such evidence existing even given large
western populations with meticulously kept water quality and
health records in the UK, Canada, Australia, US, etc.
The G20 recommended fluoride levels are safe by all the
evidence to date and work to decrease cavity rates.
joenot443 wrote 14 hours 32 min ago:
Are people in Austin more concerned about fluoride?
kentonv wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
I have never seen nor heard any mention of fluoride in Austin,
FWIW.
I mean, maybe I just don't hang out with that crowd. But I do go
to restaurants and haven't ever seen it mentioned.
kentonv wrote 17 hours 30 min ago:
It feels pretty similar, but more chill. Distances are shorter. The
sky doesn't fill with smoke for a week every year. The weather is
much more interesting -- honestly I got really bored with Bay Area
weather after 15 years. I even like the heat in the summer, in short
intervals. There are enough tech people here to be interesting, but
not enough that a random person you meet on the street is likely to
be in tech.
One thing I appreciate is that there is tons of building happening.
Housing prices went up during the pandemic, but there is new housing
being built everywhere you look, and as a result the prices are now
going down quite a bit! (Which I'm fine with, even as a homeowner,
because I wasn't planning to sell anytime soon anyway and I like to
see problems getting solved.) The downtown skyline keeps changing --
the tallest tower when I arrived is now hardly notable!
All that said I'm not sure I personally am very affected by where I
live. When I moved from Minneapolis to the Bay Area, people asked me
if it was a culture shock, but all I really noticed was less snow and
more left turn lanes...
iwontberude wrote 16 hours 53 min ago:
Having lived in the Midwest, Texas and Bay Area I can soundly say
there is no comparison which can be made about the natural
splendor. Bay Area, even with smoke in the air for a week, is
orders of magnitude more comfortable and interesting. In Texas
people cloister into giant houses and say goodbye to enjoying
nature, itâs really sad that people prefer such a reality. It
lets them forget just how grand a world there is worth saving and
fighting for instead of letting it all become privatized and
exploited unsustainably.
WD-42 wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
Iâve made this same observation which might explain why there
is such a divergent world view between people living in different
parts of the country.
A neighbor of mine recently moved (back to) Texas. Where we live
is 1/4 of a mile from a massive state park, right on the ocean
full of mountainous trails. Dude admitted he had only visited it
once in 5+ years, but complained about taxes and the price of gas
constantly. Itâs no wonder he wanted to go back.
kentonv wrote 16 hours 30 min ago:
I do a lot of biking, and TBH I've had an easier time finding
enjoyable bike routes near my house in Austin than I did in Palo
Alto. During the summer I go biking at dawn and it's great, and
during the winter there are usually 70-degree days regularly
enough.
Of course, on that measure, Minneapolis blows both of them out of
the water -- at least during the half of the year when biking is
enjoyable.
amluto wrote 2 hours 50 min ago:
Iâve never biked in Texas, but the routes even a short
distance west from Palo Alto are excellent. You need to be
willing to go uphill, though :). LAN party house v1 would have
been maybe 15 minutes from where Page Mill starts to get
spectacular, not to mention spectacularly steep.
In the modern e-bike era, the hills are more accessible, too.
kentonv wrote 13 min ago:
Oh I biked down Page Mill and into the hills a lot, that was
my main bike route. And yes, it was great. But there was
really only one part of those hills that was close enough to
get to without driving first. In Austin I have a few more
options nearby.
WD-42 wrote 14 hours 11 min ago:
As a fellow cyclist I find this strange. I visited austin to
see what the hype was about and left knowing I couldnât live
there. Massive 6 lane stroads running through suburban sprawl
for miles in every direction. Barely any elevation to speak of.
Strangely humid despite there being no water in sight.
Most people I know that are happy with the move to Texas from
California are the types that never cared for going outside in
the first place. Itâs a good place to build a big house and
fill it with toys, which is exactly what youâve done, so nice
work there!
jameskraus wrote 17 hours 52 min ago:
Hahaha, the anecdote about the subcontractor is great.
What a thoughtfully designed space for your family and friends! I feel
like going this custom is pretty rare, and youâre clearly getting the
value out of it. I also love that you did the math on the cable runs
making essentially no difference.
Thanks for sharing :)
jgeralnik wrote 17 hours 54 min ago:
What DDR pads are those? Are they custom made?
kentonv wrote 17 hours 41 min ago:
They are L-TEK Ex Pro X. Shipped all the way from Poland!
They seem to work pretty well. Have been using them frequently for
more than a year with no issues yet.
manbash wrote 7 hours 0 min ago:
Is Stepmania still the go-to DDR clone? This is very nostalgic. :)
kentonv wrote 2 min ago:
To be honest I've been using the same Stepmania 3 installation
for decades. Never updated to Stepmania 5 because the step chart
format changed and I didn't want to find all the songs again. I
have not kept up on recent developments.
jgeralnik wrote 17 hours 13 min ago:
Thanks, those were the main recommendation the last time I looked
into it (a few years ago), good to hear you recommend them too!
renewiltord wrote 18 hours 1 min ago:
Extraordinary home! Great design. Especially love the cat stuff. I have
to say, itâs wild that something âmoderateâ like an i5 / 4070
build is so powerful these days. Itâs middle of the line in this era
but itâs enough to play practically anything.
Also, this is a classic example of the power of leverage. $200k down on
a $1m home, home goes to $2m gives you a $1m profit on ~$240k.
Accidental, in this case, but nice.
somishere wrote 16 hours 58 min ago:
to see that upside on a home requires you 1. sell and 2. buy
somewhere cheaper (or not buy at all) ... Otherwise it's a zero sum
game. Home for a home.
renewiltord wrote 16 hours 56 min ago:
Indeed thatâs what OP did. Bought in the Bay low, then sold high
and moved to Austin, where presumably the increase in value is
again sufficiently high because Austin prices skyrocketed in the
last 5 years.
somishere wrote 7 hours 34 min ago:
Yes! My point is simply that, unlike an investment property, it's
often hard to "see" the upside on a home sale. OP appears to have
reinvested significantly in the epic new land + gaff, and also
makes the point that prices have since been declining in Austin.
The fact it's a home means that all this is a bit of an aside to
the real transaction.
GauntletWizard wrote 18 hours 5 min ago:
You're living the dream, man.
seg_fault wrote 18 hours 8 min ago:
Awesome! The fold up mechanism is a great idea to make it look clean,
when there is no party and it also saves the hardware from dust :D
lukevdp wrote 18 hours 12 min ago:
Love the creativity and dedication to the project. And really cool
house.
lifeisstillgood wrote 18 hours 13 min ago:
So we have an ongoing debate in the white collar world - work in the
office or work at home. I am firmly on the âteams work better in
physical proximity campâ but there are still many better ways to
arrange that physical space
And this - the hideaway desks that fold down to become a table top
gaming session, well that could make much more flexible office spaces.
(Donât get me started on offices with one or two desks and doors that
shut !)
But yeah, I like it, even if my house has that many people in I would
probably just hide in the kitchen all night
xfalcox wrote 18 hours 18 min ago:
This is super awesome, congrats!
082349872349872 wrote 18 hours 23 min ago:
LAN party game room by night, Cybersyn II by day?
But where are the ceiling duct tape hammocks?
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| [1]: http://octanecreative.com/ducttape/walltapings/images/german_t... |
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f1shy wrote 18 hours 25 min ago:
How much does it cost? Probably can only be pay be Musk, Wall and Gates
stavros wrote 17 hours 47 min ago:
Not just those, but probably not too far off, either.
082349872349872 wrote 18 hours 23 min ago:
Nope, USD 150k (for stations & cabinetry):
|
| [1]: https://lanparty.house/#cost |
|
levzettelin wrote 18 hours 10 min ago:
Fake news.
> The house overall was a 7-digit number. Sorry, I'm not
comfortable being any more specific than that.
renewiltord wrote 18 hours 3 min ago:
You can get that size of home for 2 million in Austin. The work
to make it a LAN party home is not that expensive in comparison.
The magic for him is that his dad is an architect. The home is
very well designed and if you want that kind of design youâll
be paying more. Especially if you want the whole thing ready
built.
kentonv wrote 17 hours 48 min ago:
> The magic for him is that his dad is an architect.
Yes. I could never have done any of this without that fact.
When you hire an architect, especially for a high-end house,
they are incentivized to make expensive design decisions in
order to make the house more impressive for their portfolio,
and of course the contractor is not going to stop them because
they want the money. And if you're just a normal person not
experienced in homebuilding, you will not be able to spot what
they're doing. I'm sure I would have been taken advantage of if
the architect wasn't a family member.
lostmsu wrote 18 hours 26 min ago:
Do you run Linux or Windows?
kentonv wrote 18 hours 12 min ago:
The server is Linux but the game machines are Windows.
But I am going to try switching the game machines to Linux at some
point. I can't tell you how many times I've run into what were almost
showstopper problems with the whole iSCSI netboot thing with Windows,
only to get really lucky with some registry hack that worked around
it. I'm sure it's going to just stop working at some point. Whereas
with Linux I can dig into the stack and make things work however I
want.
In fact, in the old Palo Alto house, when I first completed it in
2011, the game stations were Linux for the first six months. In
theory it was a better setup because the machines were able to use
their local disks for the copy-on-write overlay (this was easy to set
up with an initrd script and Device Mapper). With Windows, I haven't
figured out how to utilize the local disk at all -- so all the
copy-on-write overlays are on the server side, which of course wastes
server resources.
Of course, the problem with Linux is game support. We got a long way
with WINE in 2011 but there were just a few too many issues. Here in
2024, Linux is ostensibly a much more capable gaming platform, with
Steam support, Proton, etc. So maybe it'll work better this time?
Anyway, just another project on the todo list...
tim-- wrote 15 hours 55 min ago:
Have you thought about using Clonezilla and broadcasting out an
image using PXE boot?
Would completely bypass the iSCSI setup, and each machine would
still get the latest image from your server before the lan party
begins.
kentonv wrote 15 hours 20 min ago:
A really neat thing about the netboot setup is it takes zero time
to clone the image to all the machines. As soon as I'm done
installing updates on one machine, I shut down, run one command
that completes instantly, and now I can boot all the machines
immediately with that image.
There have been a decent number of times when I actually did this
during a party to fix an issue, or between parties just to keep
the machines maintained for the family to play with, etc. It'd be
hard to do that if I have to spend hours transferring a large
image every time.
Aside from the stability issues at boot time, there isn't really
a down side. I don't have any problems with load times. So I'm
pretty happy with the setup.
tim-- wrote 14 hours 48 min ago:
With multicast, you only need to send the image once to all 20
machines. With 10 gig Ethernet, a 1tb image should be sent in
approx 15 minutes.
Also, maybe having a steam cache server and using the local
disks as a game store might help with installation of games?
Definitely can see the benefits of the netboot setup, though!
hed wrote 18 hours 45 min ago:
I think these are cool and seeing the NetBoot + CoW setup for gaming is
fun.
Thanks for sharing!
anotherhue wrote 18 hours 46 min ago:
I assume this is also a CF PoP?
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