Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

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?

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...

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, it’s 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.

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.

I’ve 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.