Their biggest asset is ERP. That's how they get orgs locked in, because migrating ERP systems after deployment can take decades of work and cost multitudes more than just eating Oracle's renewal increases. Could orgs jettison them into the sun? Totally. Is it fiscally sensible? Yeah, absolutely. Can you sell that to the board? Nope.
The best way to kill Oracle - because such a toxic organization absolutely deserves to fail - is to avoid building anything atop their infrastructure ever again going forward. Don't use their Java tooling, don't use their software suites, don't use their cloud services.
Just don't use Oracle for anything new, and work to get the fuck off of it for anything that remains.
The only reason Oracle survives is because rich dumb fucks keep giving them money.
A while ago we were looking at migrating ERP - netsuite was a not a good price proposition and candidly feels a bit dated - but when you mapped features it was pretty impressive and for a lot of business that have some complexity (multi-entity, multi-currency, multi site mfg or inventory), there is not a whole lot of good alternatives because you can't use quicken but you definitely don't want SAP
The irony is that the ERP space is ripe for innovation and disruption, but nobody wants to get into ERP because it's a goddamn nightmare.
Every business runs slightly differently than everyone else, and ERP tries to be this all-encompassing monolith. I wonder if the solution to ERP isn't just targeted microservices exposing data via APIs...
It used to be that managers would take capable workers under their mentorship and prepare them to move into their old role, as their manager was helping them do the same. Everyone extended a hand down to pull someone up, because companies promoted internally and hired from within.
That's not the case anymore. Your manager won't mentor you not because they don't want to, but because they're also struggling to find footing and progression in a corporate world where nobody gives a shit about the folks beneath them, nor do they have any vested interest in long-term organizational health. It's not personal, it's just the system our predecessors put into practice so they could have an easier time keeping money and power for themselves.
If we want to care about the careers of others again, we have to build institutions where mentorship and training happen, as well as where good ideas are recognized and rewarded. That's something even the most "meritorious" of SV companies completely lack atm, and they're viewed as the companies to emulate by the rest of the investor class and industry. Until and unless other companies reject those fads in favor of strategies that grow and improve their orgs from within again, we're all kind of on our own.
I've taken multiple Amtrak routes, all out of the Northeast Corridor but eventually crossing the country West or South.
You don't take Amtrak because you want to get there fast, and you don't really take it because it's cheaper than flying. You take it because you can, and because it's more important to you to be (comparatively) comfortable instead of rushing from A to B. You take it because of the sights, the people, the chance encounters, the proximity to city centers that airplanes can never hope to match. It's an experience in and of itself that's distinctly foreign to many Americans, and one I wholeheartedly recommend.
Sitting in a roomette, crossing from Boston to LA over a long weekend, sharing delicious meals with total strangers as the countryside whizzed by (or we sat on a siding waiting on a freight train).
For what it's worth, I love trains, and the romance of them, but I ALSO love taking it from Oakland or Richmond to Sacramento and sipping a beer while I look through the window at all the poor saps stuck on I-80. I've had that drive take 4+ hours before on a Friday, especially when people are headed to Tahoe.
This is not really true, at least for the northeast corridor. Amtrak is the fastest way to get from DC to NYC for example due to traffic in the city if driving or taking the bus, and the distance from the airport (LGA or JFK) to the final destination in the city if you're flying. I take Amtrak somewhat begrudgingly because it often can be way more expensive than flights which are subsidized generally speaking over passenger rail these days, because it's simply faster.
And I honestly don't know what adventures people are talking about, most people keep to themselves. I've had more stranger experiences on flights than I have on Amtrak but maybe it's different in the West Coast.
This only applies to sleeper car routes. You're on the traib for 2-3 days, mostly with no cell service. If you eat in the restaurant car, they will seat you with strangers. If you sit in the observation car, there's a bunch of other people sitting there too.
And creeping along for hours at 25mph because you're following a freight train is frustrating in its own way, even if you have a comfortable seat and food and drink.
I did NY to Miami 18 months ago having spent a week in Washington/NY and was due for 3 days in Miami before flying home.
Saturday morning in NY looking at a few sights I hadn't seen (Trinity Church), then a relaxing train down to Miami. Beat flying and spending Sunday in a hotel room.
I didn't sit with anyone else in the restaurant car, but that does sound an interesting way to meet people from a whole different world. The Friday night in NY though I did sit at a bar next to other people, so I guess that was horrifying?
Had i been that against it though there was an option to eat in my room.
I spent the entire trip on the Acela Express first class (work was paying) from NYC to Boston talking to an absolutely fascinating man headed to his 60th MIT reunion.
I spent the entire trip (including a 4 hour delay where we didn’t move) in the cheap seats from Atlanta to New Orleans smelling the farts of someone with serious GI issues while a college kid walked up and down the aisle spraying axe body spray to drown out the smell.
I usually take the Regional on my own dime though last trip I got a deal on the return leg on Acela. The downside of Amtrak for me is that the Boston south suburban station is an hour drive in basically the wrong direction. But I hate hate driving into Manhattan.
Do you ever consider driving to New Haven and taking Metro North the rest of the way? IIRC it's as fast as Amtrak if you're on the Super Express train.
I have considered it. I’ve never done it. Parking used to be an issue for some of the commuter rail stations but I understand it isn’t in New Haven at this point. Also about twice as long a drive but likely more efficient overall.
Many many years ago I took the train from San Luis Obispo to Sacramento and enjoyed a meal in the dining car, with set times and seating assignments. It was a really interesting conversation with my randomly chosen tablemates. Sadly I don't think they do that anymore.
it's very expensive though. i used to live in philly close to 30th and had a reason to go up to nyc regularly close to penn, essentially perfect for taking amtrak, but ended up taking boltbus just because the price difference was very significant and time wise it was only like 30-45min slower.
Pro tip for those who like risk and are traveling regularly for non timely purposes they have dynamic pricing that rewards literal last 5m. I do Amtrak for like $15-40 NYC-PHL. You have to be signed in to the app otherwise they won't give you the sweetheart deal. Refresh reguarly the price changes constantly in the last 3-4h though I'll typically rock up to Penn and buy one 10m before.
Toll roads are profitable. They are basically money-printers in fact. More/all of our expressways should be toll roads IMO. Then the people who use them will pay for them, and there will be money to keep them in good repair without needing appropriations from the general fund.
Small thing - I generally haven't seen tolled motorways called Freeways - but I haven't lived in the US in a long time. I'm familiar with turnpikes of course, and a tolled motorway in Orange County, CA.
> An 18 hour highspeed NYC to LA train would be amazing.
Often I think of the cut intro scene for "Escape From New York" where Snake robs some sort of bank and then escape in the inter state subway[0]. That future is grim but at least they got high speed long distance underground subways.
High speed around the world rarely gets people taking more than about a 5 hour trip. I'm sure a few would take such a train, but not near enough to make it worth the cost of building an maintaining it. In the mean time everyone talking about that distracts from building transportation that people would use.
If you want trains in the US then you need to focus on the DC-NYC-Boston route - this should be an obvious route with affordable high speed trains every 10 minutes all day. You also need to get local trains to stop bloating the costs such that nothing but the most dense areas can afford to build them. Solve those and then start focusing on areas where trains are harder.
Well, you can take it because it's cheaper than flying. Prices are comparable to the dirtiest, cheapiest dirt cheap flights with no checked baggage, carry-ons etc., but with more space, free wifi + (often) functional mobile data, better amenities, no TSA, and all the luggage you can carry. It's amazing being able to bring a whole guitar in a gig bag without having to worry about it at all.
The romance of it is wonderful too, but even from a purely practical standpoint the only real downsides are the slow speed and inconsistent arrival times.
At $5000 vs $2000 to take my family someplace over Christmas break (when the kids are off school flight costs go up because everyone else is trying to take their kids on vacation at the same time) I'll pay the time. I seriously considered driving instead (which would have been cheaper, and perhaps faster).
Agree except for the meals. They are just OK. The experience of talking to other people on the train can be nice but the food itself is not “delicious”.
If you really like to have good food when you travel, the dining car wears thin quite quickly. I lament the lack of options for better food (I would happily pay more).
I was massively impressed by the food when I took it, certainly as good as any restaurant my expenses policy even attempts to allow me to eat in, and I'd say better than most first class on BA which I've flown a few times, other than the fixed meal times (in F on BA you can eat whenever you want)
I’m still optimistic that this is cyclical in nature, and not an inevitable - or indefinite - outcome.
Humanity has endured regular cycles of shared enlightenment (usually accompanying profound technological or societal revolutions) and dark forests of protectionism, and we always find a way to the other side. Sometimes these cycles last a century; sometimes, but a few years. Still, we always make it to the other side.
In the case of LLMs, we have to make a few assumptions: that they will not lead to AGI, nor will we solve the problem of real-time learning or context windows. These are, admittedly, huge assumptions, but the current state of AI and compute suggests a nugget of truth to them for the time being. If that’s the case, then perhaps this “dark age” of the dark forest is bounded by the limitations of silicon-based computing (hence the push towards Quantum) and the human frustration with diminishing returns from technological investment. As artisans and brilliant minds withdraw, the forest risks starvation and withering from a lack of sustenance; if humans withdraw from technology because they must hand over IDs and personal data, because to engage with technology is to surrender to surveillance and persecution, then the natural trend will be to withdraw over time - and the markets will adapt accordingly, with or without external/government intervention.
That is to say that the dark forest only lasts as long as its inhabitants decide to persecute each other for daring to light a path forward. Right now, the incentives very much favor those willing to harm others for personal enrichment; that is not always the case, and humans decide when that reasoning becomes vilifiable.
I seem to get into sort of existential crisis every few moths with the progress that llm-s are doing. I probably fool myself for a while that "it's not real", then at some point I can't fool myself any more - then I accept it somewhat ... then the new progress happens and it cycles again.
But as it's written at the top, this was a thought experiment, not a prediction. And while I tried to put all the bad scenarios on the table (with the theme of the dark forest that is), I think I again found a sense of optimism, because I also think this thought experiment has flaws.
So I hope, that after a while I will be able to write the contrary, I've already written down some points about it - I already have a title. But we will see. I am more optimistic after I wrote this than before. :P
No. It's not really a predator-prey relationship, because the predators aren't consuming the prey for sustenance. They are killing out of self-defence only.
Not surprising, as the market has broadly moved on from add-in cards in favor of smaller form factors and external devices, absent some notable holdouts in specific verticals.
Gonna miss it, though. If they had reduced the add-in card slots to something more reasonable, lowered the entry price, and given us multi-socket options for the CPU (2x M# Ultras? 4x?), it could have been an interesting HPC or server box - though they’ve long since moved away from that in software land, so that was always but a fantasy.
At least the Mac Studio and Minis are cute little boxes.
I've found that teaching DNS is an excellent gateway to learning about how the internet itself works, especially to "green" tech folks who go blank-faced when you get into protocols, IPs, etc.
Break out a piece of mail, connect the dots, and you see their eyes light up with comprehension. "Oh, so that's how my computer gets to google.com; it's just like how my postman knows where to deliver my mail!" Then a critical component is demystified, and they want to learn more.
Running a DNS server is honestly such a good activity for folks in general.
This is honestly why I've been getting deeper into Linux and self-hosting since early COVID. As much as I've loved my M1 Pro MBP, Apple's OS decisions - and my career expectation to always be on the latest version of OSes/software to help vet organizational migrations - have basically killed my enthusiasm for their kit. The hardware is phenomenal; the software does not spark joy.
And if I'm being frank, my time with Linux (Debian 13 on an N100 NUC w/ Docker) has really opened my eyes to just how excessive modern compute is, specifically to power increasingly bogged-down operating systems and woefully inefficient software. The N100 sips energy while happily transcoding 4K video streams on Jellyfin, running my IRC server for friends to hop off Discord, reverse proxying my entire home network, letting me stream game nights via Owncast, host some image board shitposts for various friend groups, host my RSS Aggregator, and still yawns with 75% excess capacity left over.
I'll still have a Mac because that's what my family uses (if they want free tech support from me, that is), and I'll still have my Windows gaming PC, but I'm already drafting up cyberdeck plans for my first primary Linux box, with just a CLI to get me by. Realizing I don't actually need ten cores and 32GB of RAM and a hefty GPU to do daily work is pretty damn revelatory - and shows how grotesque mass-market software and OSes have become in the name of marketing cycles and advertising dollars.
I've been hearing this line for over a decade, now. "Immersion cooling will make data centers scale!" "Converting to DC at the perimeter increases density!"
Yes, of course both of those things are true, and yes, some data centers do engage in those processes for their unique advantages. The issue is that aside from specialty kit designed for that use (like the AWS Outposts with their DC conversion), the rank-and-file kit is still predominantly AC-driven, and that doesn't seem to be changing just yet.
While I'd love to see more DC-flavored kit accessible to the mainstream, it's a chicken-and-egg problem that neither the power vendors (APC, Eaton, etc) or the kit makers (Dell, Cisco, HP, Supermicro, etc) seem to want to take the plunge on first. Until then, this remains a niche-feature for niche-users deal, I wager.
Those vendors all have DC power supply options, to my knowledge. It’s hardly new; early telco datacenters had DC power rails, since Western Electric switching equipment ran on 48VDC.
That’s just it though, telco DCs != Compute DCs. Telcos had a vested interest in DC adoption because their wireline networks used it anyway, and the fewer conversions being done the more efficient their deployments were.
Every single DC I’ve worked in, from two racks to hundreds, has been AC-driven. It’s just cheaper to go after inefficiencies in consumption first with standard kit than to optimize for AC-DC conversion loss. I’m not saying DC isn’t the future so much as I’ve been hearing it’s the future for about as long as Elmo’s promised FSD is coming “next year”.
I think the real reason is because battery power didn't have to be converted twice to be able to run the gear in case of an outage, so you'd get longer runtime in case of a power failure, and it saves a bunch of money on supplies and inverters because you effectively only need a single giant supply for all of the gear and those tend to be more efficient (and easier to keep cool) than a whole raft of smaller ones.
Immersion cooling was/is so fucking impractical it is only useful for very specific issues. If you talk to any engineer who worked on CRAY machines that were full of liquid freon, they'll tell how hard it is to do quick swaps of anything.
Its much cheaper, quicker and easier to use cooling blocks with leak proof quick connectors to do liquid cooling. It means you can use normal equipment, and don't need to re-re-enforce the floor.
A lot of "edge" stuff has 12/48v screw terminals, which I suspect is because they are designed to be telco compatible.
For megawatt racks though, I'm still not really sure.
We had a cluster of liquid cooled CDC Cyber mainframes. One of them developed a bad leak and managed to drain itself into the raised floor. This was a Very Bad Day for many folks in the computer center.
As seen on HN a few days ago, immersion cooling is dead: turns out the risks of getting sued to oblivion due to widespread PFAS contamination isn't worth it. [0]
DC doesn't have such a killer. There are a decent bunch of benefits, and the main drawback is gear availability. However, the chicken-and-egg problem is being solved by hyperscalers. Like it or not, the rank-and-file of small & medium businesses is dying, and massive deployments like AWS/GCP/Azure/Meta are becoming the norm. Those four already account for 44% of data center capacity! If they switch to DC can you still call it "specialty kit", or would it perhaps be more accurate to call it "industry norm"?
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the rest of the industry is essentially getting Big Tech's leftovers. I wouldn't be surprised if DC became the norm for colocation over the next few decades.
At least for servers, power supplies are highly modular. It just takes 1 moderately sized customer to commit to buying them, and a DC module will appear.
Looking at the manual for the first server line that came to mind, you can buy a Dell PowerEdge R730 today with a first party support DC power supply.
It is weird to me how far from the state of the art mainstream server equipment is. I can't imagine anything worse than AC-AC UPS, active PDUs, and redundant AC-DC supplies in each rack unit, but that's still how people are doing it.
Surely if it makes sense for the big players, they will do it, and then the benefits will trickle down to the rest? Like how Formula 1 technology will end up in consumer vehicles.
The piece gets into that in extensive detail that you should totally go read, but the long and short of it is that even those without capital and moats still have the power of writing law, and we need to exercise that early and often to redistribute capital before its concentration leads to legislative capture.
In other words, the obligations of those without Capital is to write laws that demand the benefits of Capital be shared with all.
Double Insulation was dire in the early 20th century as well. It works great for self-serving elite politics until, to stretch the analogy, the voltage gets high enough. Then it breaks down.
> those without capital and moats still have the power of writing law
If the divide is over who can write code and who can write statutes enforced by the state, it's obvious that the latter is the one that requires capital and moats, while the former does not.
I wouldn't rely on a single human being to fix this kind of issue. It's only solvable through massive collaboration and communication among those who want to fix it.
Movements that ignore the need for a charismatic leader fail, often spectacularly. It's why for example occupy wallstreet was such a laughable failure. Who was its leader? Is the human megaphone a species of "massive collaboration and communication"? Can you name me one leader from that movement who was nationally recognized as such?
Strong leaders are always required. Such people reduce the cost of messaging and communication which would otherwise be insurmountable to cohere a movement and actually make change. You don't elect a mob. Find leaders you trust and spread your conviction without apology. Roosevelt was not Roosevelt until after his works were done. We don't need some amorphous "massive collaboration and communication" we need to elect leaders who will fight for what we believe. So many of your friends, family and neighbors are willing to elect sell-out leaders. You could start there, that is if you actually want to fix the problem rather than invent new ones.
> It's why for example occupy wallstreet was such a laughable failure.
This claim is enormous. I would instead argue that the movement lacked cohesiveness because it basically complained about too large a set of (correctly identified as interconnected) issues and lost momentum because the surface was too large.
That said, I agree w your point about a face being important. Even in software, where tech can speak for itself, we see this heavily: Torvalds, Matsumoto, van Rossum, Jobs,
...which is typically done by building a movement around a leader who represents the values a movement wants to achieve.
FDR is a good example of an American leader who made substantive, wildly successful, left-leaning policy changes that ushered in decades of prosperity and (in part) last to this very day despite facing heavy opposition from the business elite of the time. They even tried to coup him!
At the time, the long term trends were dire for the American left. Double insulation was strong and getting stronger. Then the Great Depression hit. Around the world, populists and radicals were elected to office, and one way or another they changed things. In America, we managed our reform process without trying to conquer the world and without starving millions. Not Hitler, not Stalin. Roosevelt. I think that's a worthy goal to aim for again this time around.
Perhaps I mean to ask a question then, how did FDR manage to become such a widely heard leader back then with so many less ways for people to talk together? Did it make a bigger difference that he had to exist as someone people spoke to other people about? Shouldn't it be easier to find these leaders with so much more access to everyone nowadays?
Communication friction is only one cost of running a campaign among many, so the structure of parties and campaigns and primary / general elections has largely remained the same. Even if the technological barriers went away, I suspect the human factors would still hold up the structure because only so many people are willing to spend years of their life building legitimacy and promoting a political platform and each voter is only willing to spend a certain amount of time participating and choosing.
Exactly how that may have played out in the last century could be explained by many, many chains of causes and effects. But it wasn't a great leader that made it happen. At the bottom of everything, I believe it was this:
Decades of Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death destroyed not only capital but huge swaths of the labor pool. With labor at a premium, it became more valuable and power shifted.
I think that without a similar apocalypse, it will not happen again.
Yes, economic disaster is the driver (tangential: a lump-of-labor supply shock was not the transmission mechanism), but big political movements always happen from the pieces lying around. Everyone can feel that a disaster of one form or another is coming. We need to make sure the right pieces are lying around.
> even those without capital and moats still have the power of writing law,
In the country where I live, politicians pass laws to serve their corporate donors, not the voters. This results in regulatory capture, as the law works to protect the already-entrenched players. Democracy is just another institution co-opted by money.
I don't see any realistic way to use democracy to get out of this.
This is the sort of goodness the internet was made for. I'm no beer drinker myself, but I'm already sharing it with those in my circles who do.
Also a great way to teach folks on how to hold others honest and accountable, a skill sorely underdeveloped at present. Start with the pours, and push upward from there.
Their biggest asset is ERP. That's how they get orgs locked in, because migrating ERP systems after deployment can take decades of work and cost multitudes more than just eating Oracle's renewal increases. Could orgs jettison them into the sun? Totally. Is it fiscally sensible? Yeah, absolutely. Can you sell that to the board? Nope.
The best way to kill Oracle - because such a toxic organization absolutely deserves to fail - is to avoid building anything atop their infrastructure ever again going forward. Don't use their Java tooling, don't use their software suites, don't use their cloud services.
Just don't use Oracle for anything new, and work to get the fuck off of it for anything that remains.
The only reason Oracle survives is because rich dumb fucks keep giving them money.
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