121–130 of 477 posts
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Sure but they wouldn't do that, as it doesn't seem to be something that would further their stated goal: > to promote and encourage the teaching and practice of the game of chess and its variants".
I’d argue ads for chess sets actually would do exactly that.
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I would argue he already does. The entire point of "fuck you" money is that you are no longer beholden to someone else - it is not so much defined by the overall amount, but by the freedom it can buy you. He gets to work on what he loves doing every day doing it exactly the way he wants.
My definition of FU money is that you have enough money to be secure no matter what. I think he would still rely on the month to month or year to year income rather than being completely secure.
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I feel like the developer/founder should have a higher salary. $58k a year for running a site with millions of games per day.. deserves more. Is it because they don't get enough donations? Or saving the extra money for growth/buffer? (edit: originally posted this as a top level comment but felt it fit better here) Edit2: just checked. I've spent 11 whole days playing chess there (and not sure if that only counts game…
>I feel like the developer/founder should have a higher salary. This is probably the root of most of tech's angst: people thinking they're entitled to get rich just because they made /run something. If you can live comfortably doing something as rewarding as making something like Lichess, what more can you really want? People are talking about FU money/financial independence, which I agree is nice, but you can totall…
But people get distracted by things they “can afford,” the amount of money they “need” ratchets way up, and they find themselves missing out on things and making compromises anyway.
If you have already found a thing or two that makes you happy, you don’t need to hedge so much. You don’t have to keep trying to stuff things into a hole in your chest trying to fill it up.
Many, many of my parents’ problems went away when one of them started making over $50k a year. If they had been more content then it would have solved many more. Adjusted for inflation that’s a bit more than $58K today, but if your spouse is doing well enough, that’s still perfectly workable. If your health holds.
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Well it seems like the founder doesn't want more money. Not everyone needs or wants "fuck you" money, and with that kind of salary you can afford a decent life in (most of) France.
This is assuming that this stream of income doesn't ever dry up. I personally think that the founder should have enough money to never worry about money, or at least have a big buffer. If at some point in the future for whatever reason Lichess gets less donations, he could be screwed. On the other hand if he had a bit of a warchest he either has runway to increase revenue or to find another source of income.
No doubt they would get a job like the rest of us.
The problem with your proposition is it can never be satisfied, you will never have enough.
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Ads are an attack on our attention. When I go to a website, I decide to direct my attention to this website, because I believe it will offer something of interest to me. Obviously things don't come for free, somebody has to pay for it, but the issue is that as a user, I didn't agree to getting my attention diverted. The trade isn't done upfront and by the time I see the ad, it's already too late. There is also a coll…
They don't have to be. Let me do some advertising right now. Daniel Naroditsky's twitch stream is amazing. Go watch 'em https://www.twitch.tv/gmnaroditsky (If you're into chess, you almost certainly already know about him.) He also gets into feuds with Hikaru and won't shut up about him for some reason nowadays, and is constantly on a soapbox, but whatever. The chess is fun to watch. Now, if you saw a banner ad for t…
Frankly, yes. Lichess is such a relief because I know it's a place I can go without someone trying to sell me something.
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You are projecting your own desires onto the founder (which is fine, but worth thinking about why they don't want the same thing as you). It seems clear that they are happy with their salary/work. For some people, more money beyond this is not a good thing.
I'm not. It's not about having more money to spend, but having enough to be permanently secure. The founder could have FU money, still draw a ~50k/yr salary and keep their spending at the same level. The only difference is that if circumstances change the founder is still secure instead.
What if your best friend were already doing his thing? Would you feel the urge to send me to talk to him, or is he good?
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Interesting that a non profit pays 55k in French taxes
Most likely taxes on wage for the main developer salary. The tax wedge in France is slightly under 50%, so that checks out.
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> Ads are an attack on our attention. That may well be true, but let me tell you a story. I recently got into binge watching some old TV shows I enjoyed as a kid, like What's My Line and a few others. But most of the YouTube copies have the commercials stripped out! The few videos that have the old commercials are a blast. The Remington Rand Univac Electronic Brain. The Remington Rand Shaver! And as we all know, 9 ou…
That sounds to me like you're having an emotional / nostalgic response to things you were exposed to during your youth. And there is some kind of novelty to watching older commercials, no doubt. But IMO that wears of quickly. What's left is capitalistic propaganda often riddled with sexism, misogynism, homophobia etc. which to me is the real cultural significance. Not exactly sure what changed though, wether companie…
But you have to admit that the Remington Rand Univac Electronic Brain predicting the weather was pretty cool, yes?
> There is absolutely nothing positive about advertisements on websites from the perspective of their users. They eat up valuable screen space and bandwidth for something that nobody wants to see. They often manipulate and misinform. They have even been the source of security vulnerabilities many times in the past. While I share the loathing of modern Ads as a service or whatever the technical name for giving Google/…
Want to put this to a test? Imagine if you were to create a competitor and you also wanted to run ads, now imagine you will be competing with an extremely successful project that people love that doesn’t run ads so you will never be able to offer a better experience to their users.
Lichess is unbeatable.
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My definition of FU money is that you have enough money to be secure no matter what. I think he would still rely on the month to month or year to year income rather than being completely secure.
Nobody is completely secure.
There are a handful of nature and nurture reasons that tell me that full retirement would likely be very bad for my health. And of course partial retirement I could start a little sooner.