If hackers designed buildings/houses...

[TheCotMan]

If hackers designed buildings/houses what would be the result? What kinds of things would you put into houses/buildings? Multi-sized conduit? False sub floor? Ducts? Overhead/Plenum space? Pizza/Thai/Japanese/Burger/Liquor store located in the residential space? Hidden closets and locked rooms for exploration?

What kinds of things would you put into a house/building/apartment for hackers?

[astcell]

20 watt outlets
fiber and cat5 jacks ever 8 feet
entire home on a UPS
flat spots for laptops
decent plenum for cable runs
switches hard wired in, no wall warts.

Oh, and boobie wallpaper.

[klepto]

1. Half cut plastic pipes painted to match the wall, for easy ethernet cabling all along the walls, preferably toward the corner of the ceiling.

2. Some Fake ventilation ducts in the ceilings to mount waps/routers, usability but no ugliness.

3. Number of Solar panels in porportion to how much power estimated to consume as running this on PG&E power would be huge.

4. Wifi wallpaper to confine the waves in your home/Build one room without such wallpaper so you can 'wardrive' from it if you wish.

5. Video Intercom for every intercom point throughout the house

6. For server/workstation rooms, efficient ventilation aiming AC or swamp ducts directly against the back of the servers/workstations where the heat is released

7. Limit the number of wooden furniture as it holds in heat, and heat in a computing environment is undesireable

8. Hidden bomb shelter with a seperate generator, seperate phone/internet access underneath the house, stairs accessed only through say one of the bedrooms or the kitchen pantry, multiple access points would be desireable incase you have to use it for other reasons, such as safety from a burgular.

9. House windows/doors/locks function normally but if under a grave situation can initiate electric shutdown either through the video intercoms or a voice activation system, with restricted access of who can finalize the initiation, maybe thumbprint.

10. System where you can enter the schematics of people who live in your house, facial recognition would work best I think. If anyone else wants to enter the house, an existing user has to authorize it and command the computer to give temporary access. On the video intercom, there would be a beep of this process going through, so in case one of the family members is doing this at gunpoint they others can remedy the situation.

a) If someone walks in the house and the computer does not recognize them through facial recognition, doors/windows go on automatic electric shutdown till the situation is resolved.

[Voltage Spike]

Considering the heat of the desert, I'd build my house underground as it just seems more practical.

Using materials that reduce degradation of radio signals would be nice.

Non-carpet flooring for easier maintenance and cleanup.

In-wall conduits for adapting my cabling needs to the times.

"Nooks" for placing equipment (e.g., computers, televisions) so that it doesn't interrupt the normal walking path.

Structured wiring with a central, air-conditioned closet.

20 watt outlets

20 Watt outlets? I suppose that is one way to save electricity...

[TheCotMan]

20 Watt outlets? I suppose that is one way to save electricity...

I was not sure what he meant by this. I was thinking he might have meant 20 amp outlets(as common wall outlets in the US (AC110-120) have wiring leading to them to allow for 5, 10 occasionally 15 amp draw, and much less commonly 20 amp. (The greater the amp rating, the more current you can draw with less risk to equipment and fire/burn/break.)

Either that, or some sort of solar powered system which sometimes are setup to offer DC power directly to special lighting fixtures that run at low power.

I've lived in what my buddies and I referred to as "Nerd Houses" where about 5 of us move into a place, trench to the curb to get more phone/data lines pushed to the house through conduit, and then would live our lives. We would each work on our own thing, but occasionally hang out to do other things.

Let me add to the above:
Large apartment-like complex with multiple "houses" for hackers, located near "natural foods grocery store" fast food, Thai, Chinese and Japanese food.

A network operations center and a data center, both with various kinds of restricted access changed periodically after a set number of people have been able to find bypass methods. Defeated systems would be placed in a "museum" of old tech that would be functional for anyone else to play with and disassemble/reassmble/rebuild.

Space, wiring, AC, cooling, Line conditioning for PDP-11 generation systems, VAX, and other old tech for people to use.

Swimming pool with scuba tanks and recharge stations.

Garage with range of automotive tools, and welding supplies.

Oh yes, and a helo-pad on the roof of one of the buildings for med-evac -- just in case.

[astcell]

I have 4-bang outlet boxes with 20 amps per individual outlet at work. Of course you ought to see the freakin' fuse box. Can't even have enough power, you just never know where power strips will be placed.

Save the 20 watt outlets for the script kiddies. :>

Maybe a false floor too, raised about 6" with plenty of room for wiring underneath.

[klepto]

a false floor would just suck, at work i can handle all the noise of people walking on it but I would go insane if I had to go home hearing the same shit. Unless this was a custom false floor where the noise was minimized then it would be cool.