[HN Gopher] Kenton's House ___________________________________________________________________ Kenton's House Author : jumploops Score : 137 points Date : 2023-09-03 00:09 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (kentonshouse.com) (TXT) w3m dump (kentonshouse.com) | EvanAnderson wrote: | I worked at a little shop that built PCs in the mid-90's. The | owner liked to game and always made sure the office PCs were | decent-enough gaming PCs so we could have LAN parties on the | weekends. It was a ton of fun and made the office PCs very nice | for daily office work. | timeimp wrote: | I appeciate the Team Fortress 2 "Saxxy Awards" on that photo | there. | | How much has changed since then. | 71a54xd wrote: | I remember seeing this on Overclock.net back in the day! | | However, as an adult I just don't enjoy video games in the same | way. Wish I had a SWE salary that could support a build-out like | this! | asadm wrote: | As someone with the SWE salary. It's not the salary, it's | missing the friends to play with. | sammy2255 wrote: | Kenton is my idle he basically made Google protobuf now he makes | Cloudflare workers or something | lostlogin wrote: | It's never occurred to me until now - idle and idol are said | the same. | major505 wrote: | What I miss most about early 2000 during college where the lan | parties. When I went first live alone I organized a party at my | appartment. It had so many poeple that there was a guy sited in | the toilet with the keyboard and mouse on his lap, and the | monitor on the sink. | | The people favorites at the timeL: Quake 3 arena, CS1.6, and Duke | Nuken 3d using Dukester to play in Lan | gaws wrote: | Interesting backstory[1] on how Kenton found the space: | | > Housing in this area is ridiculously expensive, though, and | even after four or five years I had trouble finding anything I | could afford. There are no empty lots here, so I'd have to tear | something down, and even a run-down house in a bad neighborhood | costs $450k in this area. I didn't even bother looking in Palo | Alto -- it was way out of my range. That is, until something | really lucky happened. A commercial establishment bordering an | older residential area of town had some extra land that they | weren't using. In 2009, at the low point of the recession, they | put this sliver of land up for sale. I was lucky enough to look | at exactly the time they did this, and with the help of a loan I | was able to pick it up for a price I could actually afford. | | [1]: http://kentonsprojects.blogspot.com/2011/12/lan-party- | optimi... | dang wrote: | Related: | | _Kenton 's House_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36002756 - May 2023 (2 | comments) | | _Kenton 's Weekend Projects: LAN-Party Optimized House_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3342044 - Dec 2011 (24 | comments) | slowhadoken wrote: | I tested League of Legends during its closed beta in a bar like | this. It was a blast when bands played. It was cool playing after | hours with employees from the block too. | [deleted] | [deleted] | TheGRS wrote: | When I was in high school going to LAN parties was my main social | scene. I just loved it, even though it involved a lot of lugging | around equipment to setup. We did private LANs at each others | houses and we also went to larger events held at hotel conference | rooms. And in those years I remember dreaming of building a place | like this for myself if I ever suddenly had a lot of money. At | the time I thought that was like a dream house for me, somewhere | we could all gather and play computer games easily. Really neat | to see that dream became someone's reality, and it doesn't even | look all that complicated to put together (it even looks pretty | nice!). I'll admit that in college I strayed away from the scene, | I ended up just playing online much more often. I kind of miss it | sometimes, but being 36 now its not something I have a lot of | time for anymore, let alone gaming in the first place. | kentonv wrote: | Oh this was my house. AMA | | Past discussion (way back in 2011): | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3342044 | | I sold this in 2020 when I moved to Austin. I'm building a | bigger, better one here, which will be done... in about a month! | (4.5 years since I first saw the property... phew.) | | I'll probably publish something about the new one ~next year. :) | | I published a guide and helper code for netbooting Windows | machines from a single copy-on-write image here (currently in the | process of updating it, it has unsurprisingly bitrotted a bit): | https://github.com/kentonv/lanparty/ | shepherdjerred wrote: | How much did this cost? | | I _love_ the idea. I host LAN parties with friends, but it | looks less organized than yours. | kentonv wrote: | I built the house for $1M and sold it ten years later for | $2M. So, uh, I guess it earned me a million bucks, minus | mortgage interest. | | To be fair, that's just how much housing prices went up in | Palo Alto over that period, not really anything to do with | the specifics of the house. Got pretty lucky. | | (The computers were a relatively insignificant cost compared | to the house. Like $20k?) | someone321 wrote: | [dead] | auveair wrote: | I really like this, it's such a fun idea and usually those | never see the light of day so kudos for you to bring it to | life, twice! Bringing your computer to a LAN was just annoying | IMO. | | I was curious maybe if you had some thoughts on the more social | aspects of the project? Did you feel it made it easier to hang | out on a whim for example? | kentonv wrote: | For me, LAN parties were always primarily about the social | aspect, not actually the gaming. The games are there to give | people an excuse to get together and spend way more time in | the same place than they'd normally want to. | | I'd definitely say it served the purpose. We didn't really do | them on a whim, but once or twice a month on a regular | schedule. | | It was also great for networking -- as in, people, not | computers. Whenever I met someone new I'd invite them to a | LAN party. People would bring their friends. Made some good | connections that way. Hope to make more in Austin once the | new house is ready... | jakebasile wrote: | Austin is a great town to be in and make connections. I've | been here since 2011 and love it (except maybe the heat | during some summers). | | I can guarantee you that you'll be able to start some | conversations based on a cool house like this! Personally, | LAN parties were something I always wanted to hold more of | but just didn't have many friends playing on PC while I was | growing up. It's cool you've made it into such a central | component of your home! | GauntletWizard wrote: | Hey, Kenton! I had the honor of attending a few events at your | house. How goes? | | The gaming landscape has changed a lot in the last twelve | years, and I'm now a Linux-first gamer. Are you considering | trusting in Proton and using Linux as the primary OS for the | new house? | bryanlarsen wrote: | I had basically the same question and Kenton answered it: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37382414 | fjbarrett wrote: | The guide is so cool. I never knew you could netboot to | multiple machines and use overlays to allow per-user | modifications. It seems like a solution that could be used in a | "computer lab" type scenario. Thanks for sharing! | extragood wrote: | First of all: amazing. | | Secondly, have you followed Linus Sebastian's ultimate | tech/gaming home videos at all? He has a slightly different | objective, but he's done some creative things which you may | appreciate. | kentonv wrote: | I've heard of him, but TBH I'm generally not into that format | of YouTube video, regardless of topic. I think I'm just too | impatient to wait through the parts of the video that aren't | actively interesting, or are telling me things I already | know. | Waterluvian wrote: | Didja get any inspiration from TaKe's place where he hosted | HomeStoryCup? | | That place was my dream home for a sliver of my mid 20s when | gaming was the end all be all. | kentonv wrote: | I've actually never heard of that. Trying to Google and I see | some stories but not a lot of pictures. What is it like? | rendx wrote: | I really wouldn't enjoy facing the wall like that. For me, at | least half of the fun of a LAN party was direct interaction and | visuals from other fellow humans! Also, where do people sleep? | Since there is not sufficient space below the tables! I wouldn't | want to leave so far from my machine! ;) | | And of course, it lost some of its appeal when we didn't have to | carry around and set up CRTs any more. | ModernMech wrote: | Sleep? At a LAN party? That's the fastest way to end up with a | penis drawn on your forehead. | xwdv wrote: | I don't think this is how I'd design a LAN party house. I think a | large round table with monitors is a more social setup, and | creates equal importance amongst all the people sitting around | it. There would be space in the middle section of table behind | the monitors for people to connect their own rigs or setup one of | the house rigs. With the right circumference, you could see up to | 4 other people from any specific seating position. | | I would also make the use of projectors to project live streams | for different players in more social oriented areas of the house, | where placing a TV would be impractical. | | Pretty cool though that a LAN party house exists at all. | kentonv wrote: | Sounds like your design would require a much larger space than | I had. The whole house was 1426 sqft, including two bedrooms | and bathrooms (not shown in the photos). Having the stations | fold into the walls kept space available for normal living when | not having a party. | | That said I actually think a round table design would be less | social. With monitors along the walls, you can easily turn | around to socialize between games with nothing blocking you | from seeing other people. With the table and monitors in the | middle, I think monitors would block people from socializing | across the table. | | We'll see though, the new house actually features both designs | in different rooms... :) | xwdv wrote: | That's not fair. If a person sitting at a wall can turn | around to socialize, then I propose people sitting at a round | table can just stand up and talk to each other in a circle. | hgsgm wrote: | Standing up is a lot more work. | hgsgm wrote: | Wow, the photo makes the house look much bigger. | pwb25 wrote: | Honestly sounds quite lame. The whole thing with a LAN party is | carrying your own computer and giant CRT screen and setting up | cables all over | bryanlarsen wrote: | Maybe for the person bringing the computer. In 1994 I picked up | a dozen coax NE2000's and cables and terminators to facilitate | LAN parties. So I was the guy plugging those cards into | everybody's computers and setting up drivers. What a giant | PITA. Those cards were cheap for a reason, there was a reason | companies were dumping them en masse. | gunapologist99 wrote: | 10base2 faded out pretty quickly too. | kentonv wrote: | Having done classic LAN parties for 15 years before building | the house, I understand this feeling. That's why I specifically | designed the house such that people could bring their own | machines if they wanted. | | No one ever did. The only time people ever even busted out a | laptop is if all the built-in machines were occupied. But often | at that point the others would just hang out until a machine | became available. | | The thing is, when you bring your own machine, you tend to have | to spend time setting it up, installing games, updating | drivers, etc. There's always that one person who has to | reinstall Windows from scratch. I remember many LAN parties | where we couldn't even get started until late at night. LAN | parties had to be overnight affairs otherwise you couldn't get | any gaming in. | | With my house, I had all the machines ready to go in advance. | All identically configured, all games installed, just sit down | and go. It turned out really great. We could get more done in a | 12-hour LAN party than most 24-hour parties, and we could still | go home and sleep in our beds. (I did still have an annual | 48-hour party, though.) | | All this mean people were willing to do them on a monthly basis | or more. Whereas in my teenage years 3-to-4 times a year was | about all we could muster. | pwb25 wrote: | "The thing is, when you bring your own machine, you tend to | have to spend time setting it up, installing games, updating | drivers, etc. There's always that one person who has to | reinstall Windows from scratch. I remember many LAN parties | where we couldn't even get started until late at night. LAN | parties had to be overnight affairs otherwise you couldn't | get any gaming in. | | " | | Exactly, that's half the fun of it :) | archi42 wrote: | Updates? Installing games? For our last LAN I brought a | machine with LanCache[0] installed and mildly warmed up. I | convinced the host to finally unpack his new switch with | SFP+, connected a DAC and had the host point the DNS to that | machine. | | Having a bunch of people install cached games at GbE speed | all at once, on a 100MBit/s internet line, was pretty nice :) | | Obviously with 10GbE this is limited by disk speed. But a | minimal Linux can buffer a few games in 64GB of main memory. | | I had it cache Steam, Epic, Riot, Blizzard and Windows | Update. The cache was warmed at home over night, based on our | list of "games we might play". Though Steam was limited to | games I owned. | | [0] https://lancache.net/ | | (But yeah, I totally get what you did and would do the same!) | kentonv wrote: | Did people have to install a custom root cert or something | to get their machine to trust the cache? | | In old-fashion LAN parties, we were usually copying games | from each other. (Which doesn't necessarily mean piracy -- | Steam is pretty good about letting you copy game files and | then use them under your own account.) I feel like | bandwidth wasn't the issue as much as it was | troubleshooting configurations and stuff. But it was a long | time ago. | ThatPlayer wrote: | When I used it at my work for a bit, it didn't require a | custom root cert. Steam's client has native support for | it by checking a "lancache.steamcontent.com" DNS entry. I | believe the rest were served over http; it looks like EA | Origin switched to https at some point and broke caching | for it. | | Though Steam now does support computer-to-computer | transfers over LAN (added for Steam Deck). You do have to | enable a setting to allow other users to download, but | it's definitely less hassle. | archi42 wrote: | Yeah, I remember the copying. At some parties we spent a | lot of time doing that. | | Some CDNs use HTTP with post-download verification (I | hope). I suppose local caching is the reason for that | decision; think big LAN parties with a "only" a few | gigabit/s of connectivity (if at all). | | A nice solution is what Steam does: The client checks a | magic DNS entry (lancache.steamcontent.com), which you're | intended to override [0]. It then just works. | | For Riot, Blizzard, Epic and Windows Update I've set 36 | overrides in dnsmasq (they supply a script for that); | those are branded akamai hosts and such. It supports more | launchers and platforms/consoles, but from the big list | [1] that's all we needed. | | Now GOG uses HTTPS, so for the reason you stated that | can't really be cached for random 3rd party machines. | Subsequently, if LanCache gets an HTTPS connection, it | simply proxies the encrypted connection to the correct | server using SNI sniffing. | | Regarding bandwidth: Two games on our list were CS:GO and | LoL. IIRC four people had to install CS:GO and six people | had to install LoL. We could have setup file shares, | copied the data (as usual, with multiple people | saturating the first share to come online, and nobody | using the second or third share), hope laymen know where | their steam library lives and to put the correct folder | there... or just let them download the games directly | from the client, except on a virtual 10 Gb/s pipe ;-) | | Though to be fair: In Steam you can configure the client | to allow others to download their games from you on the | local network. If enabled, you can configure to share | with "only me", "steam friends" and "everyone". They | added the feature earlier this year[2]; probably for the | Steam Deck? One of the attendees installed Baldurs Gate 3 | (>100GB) from a friend that way. However, the local | download feature wins over the lancache, which messed | things up a bit when everyone installed CS:GO and pulled | that from a single PC instead the server; so we had | everyone disable that. | | I'm now running a smaller cache on my home server. | Additionally, I have a spare server sitting here that's | collecting dust. I think I'll permanently designate that | my LanCache server for future LAN parties. | | [0] https://lancache.net/news/2020/01/14/steam-client- | now-suppor... [1] https://github.com/uklans/cache-domains | [2] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/46BD-6BA8- | B012-CE... | [deleted] | kentonv wrote: | Definitely sounds like a lifesaver for LAN parties where | everyone is bringing their own machines! Or really when | machines are maintained by any method other than my crazy | one... :) | bryanlarsen wrote: | I notice that he started with Linux to create his copy-on-write | disk setup and then switched to Windows 7. | | I wonder if/when he rebuilds it in Austin if he'll just use | Linux, now that Proton has made Linux gaming more feasible. | kentonv wrote: | Indeed, Linux gaming is way more viable now than it was in | 2011, and it almost worked in 2011, so it probably works OK | now. I have friends who I game with regularly who only use | Linux and do OK. | | That said I'm currently prioritizing Windows for the new house, | because I know it works. Once that's all up and running I will | experiment with Linux as well. Netbooting makes it easy to | change OS on a whim. :) | | One reason Linux would be nicer is that I know how to use a | local disk (on the client machine) to hold the copy-on-write | overlay, so only the base image need be served over the network | (read-only). I have no idea how to make Windows do such a thing | (if it's even possible) so I end up having to do all the copy- | on-write stuff server-side. If I could use a local disk then | it'd be much less of a performance issue when people decide to | install extra games during the party. | mixmastamyk wrote: | How does the moving focus of Windows to telemetry, online | accounts, and ads, and games to online affect the viability | of this? | kentonv wrote: | For the time being I'm installing Windows 10 and setting it | up without ever logging into a Microsoft account. (There's | a trick during first-time setup where if you disconnect | your internet, it lets you create a local-only account.) I | haven't actually tried Windows 11, but I hear it makes this | significantly harder or maybe impossible, which is | definitely making me wary. | | People at LAN parties actually do log into their own Steam | accounts, but logging the whole machine into a guest's | Microsoft account feels worse. Then again, I haven't tried | it, maybe it'll turn out convenient, if it lets people sync | their settings between machines? Note that at the end of | the party, all changes anyone made to any machine are wiped | out. | | That said it's definitely comforting to have Linux as | another option if Microsoft makes Windows unusable for this | use case! | ocdtrekkie wrote: | If you have a Pro license and you specify you intend to | domain join the PC, Windows 11 drops you out to a local | account, but there's no escape for Home licenses. It's | pretty much impossible to remove that from Windows unless | they decide to let you domain join from the OOBE, but | that would be too convenient for sysadmins so it'll never | happen. | noxvilleza wrote: | Do you run your own Steam content caching server, or do | weekly Steam Backups to have local kinda-recent images of | the bigger games (or do you just download it fresh post- | wipes)? | ganoushoreilly wrote: | I'm not sure about op, but I actually run Lancache | (lancache.net) locally on our network. It supports Steam, | Windows Updates, Epic games, and pretty much anything | else served over http.. (https://github.com/uklans/cache- | domains). | | This is all assuming you're not using a domain etc.. and | have any of the myriad of other tools setup. We run | lancache strictly for the _fun-net_ segmented network. | kentonv wrote: | I maintain a primary disk image with all the games | installed. During a party, all the machines boot from | that same image, except each with a private copy-on-write | overlay. Any changes made on a machine are written only | to the overlay. At the end of the party I delete the | overlays. The primary image remains in exactly the state | it was in before the party. | | So before each party I just have to install updates on | one computer, like a normal person would. No need for a | special cache. (Or arguably, the primary image is the | "cache".) | | Full details and code in this github repo: | https://github.com/kentonv/lanparty/ | Farbklex wrote: | For LANs, Linux is just too much of a headache since a lot of | games require Anti-Cheat that won't run in Linux. | | I did that a few times but as soon as someone wants to play | Valorant, you're out. | kentonv wrote: | TBH we usually just turn off anti-cheat. No one at a LAN | party is going to cheat against other LAN party participants. | | It's only an issue if we want to join an internet game but we | usually don't really want to deal with internet people | anyway. | dieantwoord wrote: | no one? ;-D | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EJXTh4HMAE | kentonv wrote: | Never really understood the appeal of that kind of LAN | party TBH. Too many people, not enough socialization | opportunity, might as well just play on the internet from | home. | barbs wrote: | Awesome. I remember being mildly obsessed with LAN parties when I | was at uni, about the same time this house was built. My friend | was working (and living) in an old office for a boat warehouse, | so there were plenty of desks, power outlets and sleeping space | available. We'd bring our laptops and mostly play older games. | Good times. | ModernMech wrote: | Holy cow this was my dream growing up. I had designs and | everything. My last LAN party was in 2005, and I never got around | to it as an adult as we all kind of went our separate ways. But | I've still had the dream! | | Now, there are some things I would do differently here. To be a | true LAN party, people need to bring their own rigs. That's half | the fun. Providing the computers really defeats the purpose and | makes it feel more like an internet cafe. | | The question I have is, are they all in one room? Seems like | there might be two, so that's good. Because one of the things I | really wanted to do was have two rooms, one for each team so | there was no screen cheating. Because that kinda thing happened! | | The other plan I had was to have Bawls on tap. I don't know how | that would have been possible, but that was baked into the design | along with a soda fountain. We didn't do alcohol. | | But you know what, as I thought about it more, I realized that | the ad hoc nature of the LAN party was the best part. Scrounging | up a 16 port switch and putting it in the middle of the floor, | duct taping down the cords. Balancing the loads between walls and | the inevitable tripping of breakers when some extra guests show | up. Accidentally unplugging a daisy chained surge protector and | turning off someone's rig, prematurely ending a 12 hour session | of Age of Empires. We still talk about that to this day. | | I miss LAN parties. | pelalmqvist wrote: | > The house has twelve of these fold-out computer stations, six | in each of two rooms (ideal for team vs. team games) | | He thought about it ! | kentonv wrote: | Indeed, you might even notice in the pictures that one room | has a wall painted blue and the other one reddish. When | people asked which team to join the answer was: "What color | is the wall?" :) | | That said, in practice we don't do a lot of competitive | stuff. Instead we tend to prefer to focus on cooperative | games, like Deep Rock Galactic, Ark, Factorio, etc. This | works a lot better when everyone is somewhere between a | casual vs. hardcore gamer with very different skill levels. | | The one thing we regularly do play versus is Left 4 Dead 2. | I've gotten pretty good at assigning my friends to teams for | that one such that the games end up reasonably balanced... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-09-04 23:00 UTC)