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Why Lichess will always be free

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Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#211

Post by seszett »

littlestymaar wrote: post #176
matsemann wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about entitlement. But this guy is really good at multiple things. SRE, frontend, backend, project management etc. He could probably earn twice as much working a normal job, and even more for the right company. He don't want to. And maybe don't want/need to earn more. And that is completely fine. But his impact is huuuge. I'd wish more people did like him. But I don't think many will, because those sk…

> But this guy is really good at multiple things. SRE, frontend, backend, project management etc. He could probably earn twice as much working a normal job, and even more for the right company. AFAIK, he is French, so you need to compare it with the local job market: there's no way he could get twice as much even in the most-paying company here, the market price for such a profile is probably around €70k, assuming he…

Pretty sure he lives somewhere in Western France where housing is a lot more affordable than Paris (or Lille or Lyon).

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#212

Post by seszett »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #54
de6u99er wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall an AMA on Reddit, where the founder said he is perfectly fune with his salary as long as LiChess stays free and he can continue doing what he loves.

I think the founder should have "fuck you" money, not just a reasonable salary.

The man describes himself as a pastafarian antifascist and lichess as a hippie communist chess server. I don't think he has the same opinion on money as you do.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#213

Post by fnord123 »

blowski wrote: post #93
jhrmnn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I’ve felt a strong distaste for ads since being a teenager is that ultimately they rob me of, or try to mess with, my free choice

Almost all human interaction is in some way trying to persuade you to choose something that you might otherwise not. When I ask my wife "Shall we play a board game?" I'm in some way doing the same thing. That's not evil. Advertising is not inherently evil. When it becomes evil is when it intentionally tries to deceive us, capture and processe insane amounts of information about us, and influence the display of inform…

>When it becomes evil is when it intentionally tries to deceive us, capture and processe insane amounts of information about us, and influence the display of information for its own ends. If I did that to my wife, it wouldn't be OK.

No single snowflake is responsible for the avalanche. Even if a single ad is not inherently evil, in aggregate they have become a problem.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#214

Post by skinkestek »

MauranKilom wrote: post #157
blowski wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all human interaction is in some way trying to persuade you to choose something that you might otherwise not. When I ask my wife "Shall we play a board game?" I'm in some way doing the same thing. That's not evil. Advertising is not inherently evil. When it becomes evil is when it intentionally tries to deceive us, capture and processe insane amounts of information about us, and influence the display of inform…

Right, but the game theory there is pretty obvious: The better an ad is at "hacking" your mind and exploiting human characteristics, the more money it makes. Which naturally leads to this insane spiral of increasingly manipulative and insidious ads. If your single purpose in life was to play board games with your wife, you would probably also observe these tendencies in your questions.

> The better an ad is at "hacking" your mind and exploiting human characteristics, the more money it makes.

The same can be said about any negotiation or even any interaction, can't it? Yet there are some people and some companies you like and some that you don't like.

I've been a customer liaison at a place where the customer actively went out of their way to see our sales guy; yes, it cost them money but he'd get them a better deal the they could on their own or with any other vendor they knew. He'd actively reduce his sale if possible without even mentioning but the customer had been with us for years and had noticed the pattern.

There's no reason why ads aren't a spectrum as well:

I see nothing wrong with a link to "this is the gear that I use" on a clearly marked page as long as they actually use it.

Or a couple of books. ("You must read these 30 books to be a successful " is of course another thing entirely.)

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#215

Post by fnord123 »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #66
op03 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia, Linux, Blender, Firefox are all what?

I would call them the exceptions that prove the rule.

That's not what that means.

It means a sign saying "no blue cars" is the exception proving the rule that non-blue cars are allowed.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#216

Post by op03 »

Lvl999Noob wrote: post #64
op03 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia, Linux, Blender, Firefox are all what?

This might be survivorship bias talking. I do not have any examples with me but I am quite sure, there are a lot more projects that ended up dead.

They are not Ad based models proving non ad based models exist and work especially in the domain of free rider/collective action problems.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#217

Post by roenxi »

zimbatm wrote: post #61
pull_my_finger wrote: post #6

> 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/…

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…

That is like saying the taste of good food is an attack on our reward system. Attention works that way because it is often helpful.

On a normal day advertising is pretty useless. When the world is changing it is a very effective way to find that out. It is part of the system that drives rapid improvement.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#218

Post by MaxBarraclough »

vixen99 wrote: post #189

This was not the best of examples - 'Imagine if scientists kept the result of every scientific study to themselves.'. Given that most science is funded ultimately by taxpayers either directly or via money borrowed on their behalf by governments, this would be an indefensible position aside from demonstrating an ignorance of how science progresses.

The more full quote:

> Imagine if scientists kept the result of every scientific study to themselves. The same work would have to be done over and over again as everyone was forced to reinvent the wheel countless times to do anything at all.

Computer scientists do exactly this, as it's possible to publish while withholding your source-code. This is harmful not only in that effort is wasted reimplementing published algorithms, but also in that the reader is deprived of the ability to check the source-code for bugs that might impact the published results.

This topic has cropped up before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24261706

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#219

Post by johannes1234321 »

fsflover wrote: post #188
pabs3 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your browser is the entity transmitting information to ad networks, your browser is obeying instructions from the website instead of obeying your instructions.

Which happens because you run non-free JS code: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html

Whether the code is free or not is irrelevant for that.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#220

Post by blowski »

fnord123 wrote: post #213
blowski wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all human interaction is in some way trying to persuade you to choose something that you might otherwise not. When I ask my wife "Shall we play a board game?" I'm in some way doing the same thing. That's not evil. Advertising is not inherently evil. When it becomes evil is when it intentionally tries to deceive us, capture and processe insane amounts of information about us, and influence the display of inform…

>When it becomes evil is when it intentionally tries to deceive us, capture and processe insane amounts of information about us, and influence the display of information for its own ends. If I did that to my wife, it wouldn't be OK. No single snowflake is responsible for the avalanche. Even if a single ad is not inherently evil, in aggregate they have become a problem.

To stretch your analogy:

1. Not all snowflakes become avalanches.

2. If we didn't have snowflakes, we wouldn't have snow, and that would cause huge problems as well.

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