Why Lichess will always be free • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#351

Post by paxys » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

amadvance wrote: post #156

bscphil wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, if you saw a banner ad for that on lichess, would you really feel awful about it? Frankly, yes. Lichess is such a relief because I know it's a place I can go without someone trying to sell me something.

Did you donated to it ? Because this is possible only with donations. I did, but if at some point they will have to add some ad, I won't consider that awful if done in the right way.

> I did, but if at some point they will have to add some ad

Why? Plenty of sites are able to survive solely on a donation model, even large ones. Look at Wikipedia.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#352

Post by paxys » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #223

zimbatm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When you open the window do you feel the roads, houses or buildings you see are an attack on your attention? That your own house is an attack on the attention of others? That people would rather just see the raw nature that was there before?

No but a street full of posters and billboards definitely is.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#353

Post by paxys » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

tnzm wrote: post #259

johannes1234321 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is there any other kind of code which can be ascertained to obey its user?

There are many free and open source ad trackers out there.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#354

Post by silicon2401 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #308

silicon2401 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty extreme and entitled position. You're the one assuming that the website will offer you something of interest without any reason to do so, and that you should receive it however you want (without ads). If anything it's more reasonable to assume that you'll see ads on every page you go to. I take the complete opposite position: if I take the effort to make a website, I'll do what I want with it. Maybe…

> You're the one assuming that the website will offer you something of interest without any reason to do so Says who? Arguing against ads isn't arguing against compensation. You're assuming what is being assumed.

Says the comment I replied to

> 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.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#355

Post by codethief » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

brainwad wrote: post #293

teachingassist wrote: post #265

If Lichess is a French Charitable Association, why do its (very clear) terms say that we agree to follow the laws of England and Wales? https://lichess.org/terms-of-service This seems rather an odd arrangement. Does anyone have any insight here?

Because English contract law has a reputation for reliability, thanks to the common law doctrine of stare decisis, which binds courts to decide the same way as previous cases with the same facts were decided (modulo appeals courts). French law, by contrast, gives much more freedom to judges to decide each case individually, which sounds nice in theory, but in practice just creates legal uncertainty for everyone invol…

> but in practice just creates legal uncertainty for everyone involved.

Citation needed. Both civil law and common law seem to have their respective pros and cons. At least my understanding of common law is that in common law you need to be familiar with all past related cases dating back to who knows when, which doesn't exactly make interpreting and understanding the terms of a contract any easier.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#356

Post by paxys » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

Stratoscope wrote: post #101

zimbatm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

> I wonder which of today's web ads will achieve the cultural significance of these old classics?

This is very unlikely. Back in the day ads were a form of content in themselves. They had to be memorable to be effective, since your TV did not have a "click here" button. Web ads are more comparable to junk flyers, and I doubt you remember any of those.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#357

Post by segmondy » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

oli5679 wrote: post #177

laydn wrote: post #7

Cost breakdown here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSk... I hope OVH would donate some compute/machines to lichess. It would help lichess a lot financially. It would be good publicity for OVH and I think it would be a drop in the ocean on their balance sheet.

It's interesting that he spends so little on servers. 1 billion chess games per year, often with >20k concurrent users and and some very heavy-duty engine analysis occurring for some proportion of these games and they only spends $56k. I have seen startups with only hundreds of customers spend 10x this on AWS by copying the fancy tools used by tech giants. It is also interesting how little the creator pays himself ($…

Computers have been so fast for a good + 15yrs. If you don't use bloatware and pile on layers and layers of crap and with good system engineering it's amazing the amount of work you can compute for so little cost.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#358

Post by paxys » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

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.

Most projects end up dead, ad supported or not. I don't think that's an argument one way or another.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#359

Post by Eikon » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

nly wrote: post #341

oli5679 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that he spends so little on servers. 1 billion chess games per year, often with >20k concurrent users and and some very heavy-duty engine analysis occurring for some proportion of these games and they only spends $56k. I have seen startups with only hundreds of customers spend 10x this on AWS by copying the fancy tools used by tech giants. It is also interesting how little the creator pays himself ($…

I had the opposite reaction. $1000/mo on a few frontend servers for only 20K concurrent users seems excessive. I've seen simple $40/mo droplets handle 50,000 concurrent websocket connections with minimal latency without breaking a sweat. $2000/mo on databases is also nuts, unless you're storing hundreds of terabytes at high redundancy levels.

> $2000/mo on databases is also nuts, unless you're storing hundreds of terabytes at high redundancy levels.

What? 300TB at 0,20e /GB which would actually be quite cheap for fast storage at high redundancy would cost 60 000e / month.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#360

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

GavinMcG wrote: post #267

jedimastert wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is an "attack" on our attention. It's not a very useful distinction. I clicked the link because the title caught my attention. I come to this website because it has a rotation of good content, all of which is more likely than not to catch and hold my attention, keeping it from something else. I also don't generally agree that all ads are bad, which may put me in the minority

Even accepting that everything counts as an attack, there can't be an ad attacking your attention when it doesn't exist on the page in the first place.

>there can't be an ad attacking your attention when it doesn't exist on the page in the first place.

We can even go one step further and say there can't be an ad attacking your attention when the page itself doesn't exist at all.

The bulk of the internet wouldn't exist if not for ads. Things like youtube almost certainly could not exist, with how expensive it is to store data, provide bandwidth, develop the site itself. It's only thanks to ads that the internet is where it is today.