Why Lichess will always be free

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

sillysaurusx wrote: post #98

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a cheap project. I have seen a single developer's salary to be more than that. Considering that around a billion games were played last year in lichess.

Uh, $55k a year is not cheap! What world... Ok, it's late, I'll hold back the rest of my words. :) I think you were saying it's cheap relative to the impact it has. I agree. But "holy hell that's expensive" is an entirely accurate reaction for someone who wants to fund it out of pocket. (Gwern covers our TPU/ML infrastructure costs for around $350/mo, and I wince that I wasn't able to optimize it cheaper.)

Post by cableclasper » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

Post by 0xffff2 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

kixiQu wrote: post #347

0xffff2 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Disclaimer: this is personal opinion and relates in no way to my employment. I see this quite a bit on HN and I always thing it's silly, but this time it's particularly perplexing. Are you a lawyer for Mattel or something?

It's not silly only in proportion to your employer's aggression on the topic. Perhaps there needs to be an account disclaimer checkbox as a standard feature: "I speak in no official capacity related to any employer or professional role"....

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

cdelsolar wrote: post #336

bspammer wrote: post #327

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This is brilliant, just being able to spectate high ELO scrabble games is unreasonably entertaining. The kind of words these people come up with is crazy. I know lichess invests a lot of energy into catching cheaters, is that something you've had to look into? I imagine it's much harder to catch cheaters than in chess.

Yes, we actually have come up with some algorithms for flagging cheaters, and then a small team of experts reviews the games in question. The algorithms are the only part of the site that is closed source at the moment; if we move over to machine learning we may open them (I think of something like Irwin). The algorithms have been successful at catching a nontrivial number of cheaters already, most of whom have admit…

Post by sixstringtheory » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

codethief wrote: post #355

brainwad wrote: post #293

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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.