31–40 of 61 posts
Huge respect to Lichess. Open source, no ads, super clean interface and super functional website. Chess.com is a pain to use compared to it. All their finances are also public: https://lichess.org/costs
The linked post on Take Take Take is interesting. Magnus Carlsen created a chess.com competitor and eventually sold it to chess.com and became a sponsor. While working as a sponsor he then created a new chess.com competitor. I'm a Lichess patron and happy to see them get support, but I do feel a bit bad for chess.com in this case. Magnus is such a big figure in chess that organizations like FIDE and chess.com feel th…
All large systems are inherently weak when one individual has an outsized influence on their outcomes. The solution is not to hope Magnus is altruistic, but to not allow Magnus (or any individual) to drive meaningful outcomes directly or through their combined influence/followings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lichess is written in Scala and is hosted on dedicated OVH for a very significantly small amount of money (I think just a few thousand dollars per month) and hosts so many millions of players and games. It's an understatement how well optimized they are right down to the optimization techniques that they use and the infra providers that they use. The same thing even in something like AWS could cause significantly mor…
> It also shows that you don't need AWS/GCP/Azure for basically just about everything, to be honest. That's where they won, people think AWS/GCP/Azure has to be the default while in reality, the number of platforms that actually need to be able to scale up/down fast are probably below 1% of all platforms out there. Most platforms would save money and run better with proper dedicated hardware rather than going for clo…
I can imagine a lot of small apps buy into serverless at a time where it’s legitimately the most cost-effective solution and then they’re stuck because serverless platforms are easy to lock yourself into.
Huge respect to Lichess. Open source, no ads, super clean interface and super functional website. Chess.com is a pain to use compared to it. All their finances are also public: https://lichess.org/costs
I'm not sure what to think, but that's definitely interesting. I wonder what chess.com is paying their engineers.
The linked post on Take Take Take is interesting. Magnus Carlsen created a chess.com competitor and eventually sold it to chess.com and became a sponsor. While working as a sponsor he then created a new chess.com competitor. I'm a Lichess patron and happy to see them get support, but I do feel a bit bad for chess.com in this case. Magnus is such a big figure in chess that organizations like FIDE and chess.com feel th…
Business is business. Non-competes expire. Don't waste your feelings on chess.com.
> Magnus Carlsen, co-founder of Take Take Take, will not be actively promoting the platform at launch. With Take Take Take now offering a full play and learning experience, it enters territory that conflicts with his ambassador agreement with Chess.com. He remains a co-founder and the company's largest shareholder, and the team expects his involvement to resume once those contractual constraints change. For now, the product will have to speak for itself.
Huge respect to Lichess. Open source, no ads, super clean interface and super functional website. Chess.com is a pain to use compared to it. All their finances are also public: https://lichess.org/costs
Their lead developer is paid $72k/yr, and mobile developer $49k/yr. I'm not sure what to think, but that's definitely interesting. I wonder what chess.com is paying their engineers.
The linked post on Take Take Take is interesting. Magnus Carlsen created a chess.com competitor and eventually sold it to chess.com and became a sponsor. While working as a sponsor he then created a new chess.com competitor. I'm a Lichess patron and happy to see them get support, but I do feel a bit bad for chess.com in this case. Magnus is such a big figure in chess that organizations like FIDE and chess.com feel th…
FIDE and chess.com did behave pretty shitty sometimes and I think its good Magnus is in a position to counter them a bit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All large systems are inherently weak when one individual has an outsized influence on their outcomes. The solution is not to hope Magnus is altruistic, but to not allow Magnus (or any individual) to drive meaningful outcomes directly or through their combined influence/followings.
Magnus "drives meaningful outcomes" because he's really good at chess and members of the public enjoy watching him play, so various chess-related businesses will pay him money for sponsorship. How do you propose to "not allow him" that influence? Ban all use of people's names in marketing and products?
He's not the first person to be "really good at chess".
It's a broad statement meant to mean "celebrities have too big of a platform and too much influence over the average joe".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their lead developer is paid $72k/yr, and mobile developer $49k/yr. I'm not sure what to think, but that's definitely interesting. I wonder what chess.com is paying their engineers.
Could be part time