4 ms·

It's the minority of the total spend, but it seems the hosting costs are too high. For example, they are paying $266/month for 16 thread 128GB 3.8TB SSD, but y

by devit 5y ago

It's the minority of the total spend, but it seems the hosting costs are too high. For example, they are paying $266/month for 16 thread 128GB 3.8TB SSD, but you can rent a better machine for 99$/month from Hetzner (AX61-NVME). They are also spending $40k/year on "data protection services" (?!?) and 60k for "site moderation" (they could instead not moderate or rely on third-party forums and messaging services they don't need to moderate).

kevingadd 5y ago
"they could instead not moderate or rely on third-party forums and messaging services they don't need to moderate" at that point, you might as well not run the service. moderation isn't optional if you want a healthy community.
- hffftz 5y ago
Tenoke 5y ago
>$40k/year on "data protection services" (?!?) I'm guessing this is paying an employee/consultant to ensure they are compliant with everyone's policies. At that scale you have to care about every jurisdiction and letting the one dev guess at compliance might not be ideal. > 60k for "site moderation" (they could instead not moderate or rely on third-party forums and messaging services they don't need to moderate). Can you even just not moderate? There's some stuff you legally have to due to say NetzDG for German users, and compliance with everyone else.
cillian64 5y ago
Everybody complains when someone gets inexplicably/stupidly banned by an AI and there are no humans to review it. Spending money on moderation by actual skilled people is how you solve the problem. This is one place I’m very happy to see them not skimping.
iKlsR 5y ago
> (they could instead not moderate or rely on third-party forums and messaging services they don't need to moderate) Have you ever used the site? How does that work by not moderating? When I report someone for being racist, spamming or submit a game where I think someone cheated... who handles that, what forum or open service doesn't have some type of moderation and in this case were you want a seamless experience with your app as they do with chat, blog, forum and multiple daily tournaments.
- devit 5y ago
  - yunohn 5y ago
    "How to save money" by HN Remove moderation, and hence the entire discussion forum. Why would lichess users ever want that? They might as well go to a different website, instead. /s
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      Play chess?
  - nextaccountic 5y ago
    This would just push people to play on Chess.com
  - Smithalicious 5y ago
    You can go one step further and drive the costs to zero by outsourcing not only the social aspects, but the chess games as well!
  - nimih 5y ago
    Have you considered that having a pleasant, well-moderated community is part of the draw (and, perhaps, even an explicit goal) of lichess? Such things are apparently expensive to run.
ksec 5y ago
Some of those pricing seems strange, for example, OVH listed its Dedicated server Rise-2 [1] as US$ 80.92 ex. GST/month with 12 month commitment. Which is the same spec as their socket frontend listed as $110. There are other places like YoloDB and Insight with only 12 Threads. The same E-2136 Intel CPU with 64GB Memory is listed as $173 per month in the spreadsheet, while it is US$ 143.14 ex. GST/month 12 month commitment. But yes generally speaking OVH is a rather strange breast. Much prefer Hetzner. A Zen 2 64 Thread, 192 GB Memory and 3.8TB SSD DB Primary listed as $464.00 in the spreadsheet only cost about $210 on Hetzner. [1] https://www.ovhcloud.com/asia/bare-metal/rise/rise-2/ https://www.ovhcloud.com/asia/bare-metal/rise/rise-2/
- mattkrause 5y ago
  If it's French (as people have suggested elsewhere), the VAT rate is 20%. $143.14 x 1.2 = $172 Assuming it applies, some of those numbers more or less work out.
- JoeOfTexas 5y ago
  OVH has unmetered bandwidth, which is kinda important considering how many games they are showing you at any one time. Hetzner has 20TB which can be easily done in a day. Can't find their pricing, but everyone usually charges $0.01/GB, which can add up quick.
  - manquer 5y ago
    Not for their dedicated servers. For dedicated servers bandwidth is unmetered https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/general/traffic/ https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/general/traffic/ Also for their shared servers or servers with 10GBs nics they charge $1/TB when metered that is $0.001/GB you are off by a order of magnitude https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/px62 https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/px62
- Thaxll 5y ago
  Hetzner is much smaller and have really few locations... They basically host everyting in germany or finland. OVH also has way better anti DDoS. https://www.ovh.com/ca/en/anti-ddos/ https://www.ovh.com/ca/en/anti-ddos/

by devit 5y ago

kevingadd 5y ago

"they could instead not moderate or rely on third-party forums and messaging services they don't need to moderate" at that point, you might as well not run the service. moderation isn't optional if you want a healthy community.

hffftz 5y ago

Tenoke 5y ago

>$40k/year on "data protection services" (?!?) I'm guessing this is paying an employee/consultant to ensure they are compliant with everyone's policies. At that scale you have to care about every jurisdiction and letting the one dev guess at compliance might not be ideal. > 60k for "site moderation" (they could instead not moderate or rely on third-party forums and messaging services they don't need to moderate). Can you even just not moderate? There's some stuff you legally have to due to say NetzDG for German users, and compliance with everyone else.

cillian64 5y ago

Everybody complains when someone gets inexplicably/stupidly banned by an AI and there are no humans to review it. Spending money on moderation by actual skilled people is how you solve the problem. This is one place I’m very happy to see them not skimping.

iKlsR 5y ago

> (they could instead not moderate or rely on third-party forums and messaging services they don't need to moderate) Have you ever used the site? How does that work by not moderating? When I report someone for being racist, spamming or submit a game where I think someone cheated... who handles that, what forum or open service doesn't have some type of moderation and in this case were you want a seamless experience with your app as they do with chat, blog, forum and multiple daily tournaments.

devit 5y ago
- yunohn 5y ago
  "How to save money" by HN Remove moderation, and hence the entire discussion forum. Why would lichess users ever want that? They might as well go to a different website, instead. /s
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    Play chess?
- nextaccountic 5y ago
  This would just push people to play on Chess.com
- Smithalicious 5y ago
  You can go one step further and drive the costs to zero by outsourcing not only the social aspects, but the chess games as well!
- nimih 5y ago
  Have you considered that having a pleasant, well-moderated community is part of the draw (and, perhaps, even an explicit goal) of lichess? Such things are apparently expensive to run.

ksec 5y ago

Some of those pricing seems strange, for example, OVH listed its Dedicated server Rise-2 [1] as US$ 80.92 ex. GST/month with 12 month commitment. Which is the same spec as their socket frontend listed as $110. There are other places like YoloDB and Insight with only 12 Threads. The same E-2136 Intel CPU with 64GB Memory is listed as $173 per month in the spreadsheet, while it is US$ 143.14 ex. GST/month 12 month commitment. But yes generally speaking OVH is a rather strange breast. Much prefer Hetzner. A Zen 2 64 Thread, 192 GB Memory and 3.8TB SSD DB Primary listed as $464.00 in the spreadsheet only cost about $210 on Hetzner. [1] https://www.ovhcloud.com/asia/bare-metal/rise/rise-2/ https://www.ovhcloud.com/asia/bare-metal/rise/rise-2/

mattkrause 5y ago
If it's French (as people have suggested elsewhere), the VAT rate is 20%. $143.14 x 1.2 = $172 Assuming it applies, some of those numbers more or less work out.
JoeOfTexas 5y ago
OVH has unmetered bandwidth, which is kinda important considering how many games they are showing you at any one time. Hetzner has 20TB which can be easily done in a day. Can't find their pricing, but everyone usually charges $0.01/GB, which can add up quick.
- manquer 5y ago
  Not for their dedicated servers. For dedicated servers bandwidth is unmetered https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/general/traffic/ https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/general/traffic/ Also for their shared servers or servers with 10GBs nics they charge $1/TB when metered that is $0.001/GB you are off by a order of magnitude https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/px62 https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/px62
Thaxll 5y ago
Hetzner is much smaller and have really few locations... They basically host everyting in germany or finland. OVH also has way better anti DDoS. https://www.ovh.com/ca/en/anti-ddos/ https://www.ovh.com/ca/en/anti-ddos/