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So uh do we still get to keep our Free A1 VPS with 4 OCPU, 24GB RAM and 200GB Storage...?? If Oracle starts charging the dozens (tens of thousands?) of us that

So uh do we still get to keep our Free A1 VPS with 4 OCPU, 24GB RAM and 200GB Storage...?? If Oracle starts charging the dozens (tens of thousands?) of us that signed up for Pay-as-you-go just to be able to provision a VM, I'm deleting my account. But in all seriousness, Oracle is a terrible company that has scammed governments and corporations. Not really surprised. Bryan Cantrill said it best [0]. Oracle is "morally bankrupt," Larry Ellison prioritizes profits over ethics and innovation. I'm not surprised if the stock price was forced to fall by Ellison because of his July sells [1] 1. He dumped $322 million (2.25 million shares) in mid July in TWO days signalling lack of confidence 2. These shares were spread out with different sizes, to probably minimize the market impact 3. The sells still pushed the stock prices down 4. Then the "cost-cutting" and OCI layoffs happen Obviously correlation isn't causation, but Oracle clearly doesn't care about their cloud, just MONEY, HA! Larry Ellison's Stock Sales - July 15-16, 2024 Date Quantity Price % Change Running Total ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jul 16 87,127 $143.17 -0.01% 1,145,732,353 Jul 16 1,037,873 $142.53 -0.09% 1,145,819,480 Jul 15 579,765 $142.64 -0.05% 1,146,277,588 Jul 15 81,871 $143.45 -0.01% 1,146,195,717 Jul 15 237,491 $144.61 -0.02% 1,145,958,226 Jul 15 191,252 $145.34 -0.02% 1,145,766,974 Jul 15 34,621 $146.30 -0.00% 1,145,732,353 [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s [1] https://www.quiverquant.com/stock/ORCL/insiders/ https://www.quiverquant.com/stock/ORCL/insiders/

SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
I’ve been enjoying doing what I call “siphoning pennies from Larry Ellison” happily via the “always free” OCI tier for almost a year now. I know, given the stewards of this, that “always free” is an empty promise that will eventually go away, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts. I used https://github.com/jpetazzo/ampernetacle https://github.com/jpetazzo/ampernetacle to provision resources and it’s been the “brain” for my personal cloud for this whole time. It doesn’t run much, basically ArgoCD, Tailscale operator and a CoreDNS deployment that does internal routing, but heck, it’s a free highly available control plane for an internal homelab. No other cloud even comes close to OCI’s offering, if you were to provision the same on other clouds it would be minimum $50 USD+ per month Once it finally dies I’ll probably just go find some low cost provider like Hetzner or OVH to run this. I’m purposefully not really doing much on that instance as a result because I know that my small little bundle of terraform that builds out the vm’s will eventually need to be rewritten, so I’ve also purposefully avoided using any OCI specific constructs for my implementation.
- bottom999mottob 2y ago
  Did you link a card with Pay-as-you-go? It seems like OCI puts free tier users in a low-priority queue, so that people have resorted to using auto-clicker scripts for weeks to even provision an instance. That repo looks cool, if I really wanted to learn Kubernetes. My usage right now is for running inference on CPU RAMs because I refuse to upgrade my 980-ti, so I'm not sure it would work for me
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
    You have to link a card if you don’t want to have a bot that spams looking for open instances. I tried without linking a card but it’s basically impossible without automation to secure an instance, and they can arbitrarily just nuke your instance at any time if they feel like you are being “abusive” or even just idling the machines and not using resources, plenty of complaints about that. Adding a card removes all of those concerns and you can instantly provision the resources and never worry about anything being arbitrarily shut down. I have only had one 1 cent charge since I got it because I provisioned some volume storage before I realized that it would incur costs. If you just use the repo I linked and otherwise never touch resources or auto provision anything on the infra side you’ll never be charged. I would highly recommend this use case for learning kube, but also it’s kind of limiting because several things you might want to use with kube will also incur additional costs. You can avoid the costs if you simply just don’t do anything that triggers a cost event, but people who are not familiar with how kube can provision infra resources under the hood might footgun themselves and wire into a cloud load balancer instead of using MetalLB for instance. Probably inference is not really a good use case here, the compute they give is considered extremely good in terms of free, but still kind of anemic for inference use cases.
    - bottom999mottob 2y ago
      Yeah I refuse to give Oracle a dime, so I'll keep that in mind. I only run the tiny models for fun (the CPU inference is enough) and any complex coding tasks go through GPT or Claude. Mainly just using the one instance as another backup server, run scrapers, host a bunch of containers, and experiment with networking services. I don't see a reason to split up my one instance, but maybe in the future.
fyt2024 2y ago
Interesting. Tell me more. The stock looks wild. Time to go short?
- FredPret 2y ago
  Oracle is an interesting company. Lots of locked-in enterprises, but everybody in tech hates them. I think they're a future IBM, but it'll take a long time, perhaps decades, to get there (once an ERP, database system, or cloud provider gets into a big enterprise, it's not leaving again soon). They have rock solid earnings [https://valustox.com/ORCL https://valustox.com/ORCL] but they're trading at high valuations given their low growth rate and modest dividend. I am neither buying nor shorting them right now.
  - ab_testing 2y ago
    I think the only tech people who hate them are the ones who think that Oracle is a database company ala Postgres and then wonder why it is worth billions of dollars. Most of their current revenue for now comes from their fusion ERP suite that runs in the cloud. Those products have a lot of stickiness as businesses don’t switch ERP systems often.
- raincom 2y ago
  Never short based on fundamentals. It takes a lot of tuition fees (losses in the market) to learn that lesson.
tiffanyh 2y ago
I think you're misinformed on how Larry handles his investments. He uses a Blind Trust. Due to how many investments he has that could create SEC insider trading issues, Larry has a Blind Trust that sells his stock as they see best fit without his influence. So this wasn't Larry selling $322M in stock. It was his Blind Trust that did. Also, he's not hurting for cash. He gets an annual dividend of ~$1.6B from Oracle due to him owning 42% of he company.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Blind trusts are hardly a guarantee. Trump put his kids in charge of the trust. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-children-business-blind-trust-231179 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-children-busine... Romney had a friend handle it. https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/mitt-romneys-blind-trust-blind/story?id=15188063 https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/mitt-romneys-blind-trust-blin...
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    Also, there's an important difference in threat-model between: 1. Insulating a blind trust from an insider's reactive knowledge of changes. ("A secret CIA report says Latveria is going to open its borders to trade.") 2. Insulating a blind trust from an insider's proactive policy decisions which causes changes. ("I've always told my friends that we should try to trade with Latveria.") In other words, it's not really a "blind" trust if it makes investment decisions knowing that the politician will cause certain sectors or businesses to perform better or worse.
- bottom999mottob 2y ago
  Actually I think you're mischaracterizing and spreading misinformation about how Larry's stock sales work. Let's look at the ACTUAL SEC Filings on their website [0]. These filings show this is the "LAWRENCE J. ELLISON REVOCABLE TRUST", but being revocable doesn't automatically mean it's not a blind trust. However, several details from the filings indicate this was NOT operating as a blind trust: 1. These were planned exercises of stock options that were expiring on July 24, 2024 [1] 2. Two transactions of 1,125,000 options each were exercised at $40.47 [1] 3. The shares were then sold in declining price blocks to minimize market impact 4. All forms are signed by either Paul T. Marinelli (trustee) [2][3] or Aimee Weast (Attorney in fact for Ellison) [1] 5. Ellison is explicitly listed as "Officer" and "10% Owner" [1] Go to page 4 to see these documents: [0] https://investor.oracle.com/sec-filings/default.aspx https://investor.oracle.com/sec-filings/default.aspx July 17, 2024 - Form4 - Statement of Changes in Beneficial Ownership [1] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/1c6945fd-bf17-43b4-a41a-cf3743cb9047.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/1c6945f... July 16, 2024 - Form144 - Report of proposed sale of securities [2] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/3bc4831c-91af-4c1b-ba0b-f456211c7958.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/3bc4831... July 15, 2024 - Form144 - Report of proposed sale of securities [3] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/0b76c30e-195d-4700-aaee-b8777fc4a86e.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/0b76c30... While you're correct that Ellison isn't hurting for cash, the evidence suggests these were scheduled options exercises ahead of expiration, not discretionary blind trust trading. I'd encourage you to review the actual SEC filings before making claims about how Larry handles his investments...

SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago

I’ve been enjoying doing what I call “siphoning pennies from Larry Ellison” happily via the “always free” OCI tier for almost a year now. I know, given the stewards of this, that “always free” is an empty promise that will eventually go away, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts. I used https://github.com/jpetazzo/ampernetacle https://github.com/jpetazzo/ampernetacle to provision resources and it’s been the “brain” for my personal cloud for this whole time. It doesn’t run much, basically ArgoCD, Tailscale operator and a CoreDNS deployment that does internal routing, but heck, it’s a free highly available control plane for an internal homelab. No other cloud even comes close to OCI’s offering, if you were to provision the same on other clouds it would be minimum $50 USD+ per month Once it finally dies I’ll probably just go find some low cost provider like Hetzner or OVH to run this. I’m purposefully not really doing much on that instance as a result because I know that my small little bundle of terraform that builds out the vm’s will eventually need to be rewritten, so I’ve also purposefully avoided using any OCI specific constructs for my implementation.

bottom999mottob 2y ago
Did you link a card with Pay-as-you-go? It seems like OCI puts free tier users in a low-priority queue, so that people have resorted to using auto-clicker scripts for weeks to even provision an instance. That repo looks cool, if I really wanted to learn Kubernetes. My usage right now is for running inference on CPU RAMs because I refuse to upgrade my 980-ti, so I'm not sure it would work for me
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
  You have to link a card if you don’t want to have a bot that spams looking for open instances. I tried without linking a card but it’s basically impossible without automation to secure an instance, and they can arbitrarily just nuke your instance at any time if they feel like you are being “abusive” or even just idling the machines and not using resources, plenty of complaints about that. Adding a card removes all of those concerns and you can instantly provision the resources and never worry about anything being arbitrarily shut down. I have only had one 1 cent charge since I got it because I provisioned some volume storage before I realized that it would incur costs. If you just use the repo I linked and otherwise never touch resources or auto provision anything on the infra side you’ll never be charged. I would highly recommend this use case for learning kube, but also it’s kind of limiting because several things you might want to use with kube will also incur additional costs. You can avoid the costs if you simply just don’t do anything that triggers a cost event, but people who are not familiar with how kube can provision infra resources under the hood might footgun themselves and wire into a cloud load balancer instead of using MetalLB for instance. Probably inference is not really a good use case here, the compute they give is considered extremely good in terms of free, but still kind of anemic for inference use cases.
  - bottom999mottob 2y ago
    Yeah I refuse to give Oracle a dime, so I'll keep that in mind. I only run the tiny models for fun (the CPU inference is enough) and any complex coding tasks go through GPT or Claude. Mainly just using the one instance as another backup server, run scrapers, host a bunch of containers, and experiment with networking services. I don't see a reason to split up my one instance, but maybe in the future.

fyt2024 2y ago

Interesting. Tell me more. The stock looks wild. Time to go short?

FredPret 2y ago
Oracle is an interesting company. Lots of locked-in enterprises, but everybody in tech hates them. I think they're a future IBM, but it'll take a long time, perhaps decades, to get there (once an ERP, database system, or cloud provider gets into a big enterprise, it's not leaving again soon). They have rock solid earnings [https://valustox.com/ORCL https://valustox.com/ORCL] but they're trading at high valuations given their low growth rate and modest dividend. I am neither buying nor shorting them right now.
- ab_testing 2y ago
  I think the only tech people who hate them are the ones who think that Oracle is a database company ala Postgres and then wonder why it is worth billions of dollars. Most of their current revenue for now comes from their fusion ERP suite that runs in the cloud. Those products have a lot of stickiness as businesses don’t switch ERP systems often.
raincom 2y ago
Never short based on fundamentals. It takes a lot of tuition fees (losses in the market) to learn that lesson.

tiffanyh 2y ago

I think you're misinformed on how Larry handles his investments. He uses a Blind Trust. Due to how many investments he has that could create SEC insider trading issues, Larry has a Blind Trust that sells his stock as they see best fit without his influence. So this wasn't Larry selling $322M in stock. It was his Blind Trust that did. Also, he's not hurting for cash. He gets an annual dividend of ~$1.6B from Oracle due to him owning 42% of he company.

ceejayoz 2y ago
Blind trusts are hardly a guarantee. Trump put his kids in charge of the trust. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-children-business-blind-trust-231179 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-children-busine... Romney had a friend handle it. https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/mitt-romneys-blind-trust-blind/story?id=15188063 https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/mitt-romneys-blind-trust-blin...
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Also, there's an important difference in threat-model between: 1. Insulating a blind trust from an insider's reactive knowledge of changes. ("A secret CIA report says Latveria is going to open its borders to trade.") 2. Insulating a blind trust from an insider's proactive policy decisions which causes changes. ("I've always told my friends that we should try to trade with Latveria.") In other words, it's not really a "blind" trust if it makes investment decisions knowing that the politician will cause certain sectors or businesses to perform better or worse.
bottom999mottob 2y ago
Actually I think you're mischaracterizing and spreading misinformation about how Larry's stock sales work. Let's look at the ACTUAL SEC Filings on their website [0]. These filings show this is the "LAWRENCE J. ELLISON REVOCABLE TRUST", but being revocable doesn't automatically mean it's not a blind trust. However, several details from the filings indicate this was NOT operating as a blind trust: 1. These were planned exercises of stock options that were expiring on July 24, 2024 [1] 2. Two transactions of 1,125,000 options each were exercised at $40.47 [1] 3. The shares were then sold in declining price blocks to minimize market impact 4. All forms are signed by either Paul T. Marinelli (trustee) [2][3] or Aimee Weast (Attorney in fact for Ellison) [1] 5. Ellison is explicitly listed as "Officer" and "10% Owner" [1] Go to page 4 to see these documents: [0] https://investor.oracle.com/sec-filings/default.aspx https://investor.oracle.com/sec-filings/default.aspx July 17, 2024 - Form4 - Statement of Changes in Beneficial Ownership [1] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/1c6945fd-bf17-43b4-a41a-cf3743cb9047.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/1c6945f... July 16, 2024 - Form144 - Report of proposed sale of securities [2] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/3bc4831c-91af-4c1b-ba0b-f456211c7958.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/3bc4831... July 15, 2024 - Form144 - Report of proposed sale of securities [3] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/0b76c30e-195d-4700-aaee-b8777fc4a86e.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001341439/0b76c30... While you're correct that Ellison isn't hurting for cash, the evidence suggests these were scheduled options exercises ahead of expiration, not discretionary blind trust trading. I'd encourage you to review the actual SEC filings before making claims about how Larry handles his investments...