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Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre
- ChrisArchitect 3mo agoRelated: S&P Global has lowered Oracle’s creditworthiness from BBB to BBB- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909768
- spamizbad 3mo agoOne level above junk. Yikes.
- mschuster91 3mo agoThe problem with Oracle is how much utterly and directly depends on them. They still are the authoritative source on "what is Java" and stuff like SAP directly depends on Java and in many cases Oracle Database (the supported alternatives are AFAIK IBM's mainframe stuff and MS SQL, but I only ever saw Oracle whenever I had the misfortune of having to dig into SAP). If Oracle goes down, a lot of businesses are going to be in a lot of trouble, and there will be a lot of fighting over the scraps.
- cyanydeez 3mo agooh no, not the hierarchy of consulting! the horrors. Better grab your nearest gpu and open model to replace them.
- mattalex 3mo agoSAP has largely switched over to their own HANA database for new deployments. Even before that their "AnyDB" database worked with pretty much any backend and is still supported. The reason you see oracle has less to do with what SAP wants and more to do with "It's what the company/engineers have already used/set up in the past". Regarding Java, SAP has long switched over to openjdk (though oracle java is supported in some cases). Specifically, they have their own custom fork of openjdk "SapMachine" precisely to be independent from oracle (FYI: if you look at openjdk upstream you will see many core contributors are employed by SAP) In general, I would say that the actual tech companies that have to interact with oracle's stuff are generally very well equipped to drop them or have already done so. The bigger issue are legacy "consumers" of oracle (e.g. if Pepsi has their data in oracle DB), which often do not have such contingencies.
- cozzyd 3mo agoyeah, like my university's whole accounting system...
- nitwit005 3mo agoIt's rare for a large company to simply close down. Usually someone buys it out of bankruptcy, and keeps the profitable parts going. Database licensing definitely makes money.
- cyanydeez 3mo agoevery stock should have the chance to go to zero if we are to have a true Free Market.
- superze 3mo agoInstead they bail them out and let society go to zero. But socialism bad
- Ekaros 3mo agoFundamentally wiping out shareholders and most of bond holders bonds is a good thing. It keeps markets healthy and honest. Excuses about pensions is just excuses from gamblers.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3mo agoThe boom/bust cycle is the Faustian engine of innovation. Take away the risk of busts and we have fake capitalism without innovation or renewal.
- cyanydeez 3mo agoremember during covid it was deemed acceptable for the elderly to die for the economy? We need that, but for useless corporate slop that's now relaceable by useless AI slop. Slop In, Slop Out (SISO)
- jollyllama 3mo agoDamn, that's after it was already lowered last fall. I lack perspective, does that mean it's sinking like a stone?
- chasd00 3mo agoFrom what I can tell, the DC buildout isn't going that well. I've been wondering about the current status of the projects because there hasn't been much in the news or here about new DC's coming online. This report summary makes the point that getting power to the datacenters with onsite generation is running into roadblocks from permitting to even finding turbines to buy. He who shouldn't be named (here) made the same point in an interview that popped up on my youtube feed while pitching the datacenters-in-spaaaace angle. Software people are getting a lesson on the difficulties of utility scale power hardware. https://cleanview.co/reports/behind-the-meter-data-centers https://cleanview.co/reports/behind-the-meter-data-centers /can't read the article
- skywhopper 3mo agoThe idea that we can’t get enough electrical power on earth because of supply constraints, but that we can solve that by launching the datacenters and their entire support infrastructure into space makes no sense unless you’re a huckster trying to pump up your space launch business ahead of an IPO. There’s no way we are more constrained on land-based solar+battery equipment than we would be on space-worthy solar+battery+space-cooling equipment plus sufficient launch infrastructure and resources. Meanwhile, our government is paying companies to stop building wind power and bombing sources of natural gas.
- superkuh 3mo agoWhy submit links to pages that have absolutely no information on them? ft.com is useless and does not display articles. It should probably be on a banlist for HN.
- Grombobulous 3mo agoThere’s an archive link in the comments, so it’s readable.
- VonGuard 3mo agoOracle cannot possibly be expecting to meet its bets here. My own empirical one-person observation is that my friend worked there in the group that went around the world standing up their new cloud datacenters, and he was there from basically 2019 to earlier this year. They laid him and half his team off earlier this year. Absolutely nonsensical if they're really building out cloud data centers. Because that's exactly what his job was for the previous 5 years.... Can anyone make that make sense? The team was like 15 people and is now 7. Not exactly a large enough team to build out billions of dollars worth of data centers... Maybe they're just going to contract that all out, but this guy and his team were a very smooth, very well greased machine for standing this stuff up quickly and reliably.
- throwaway26721 3mo ago> Because that's exactly what his job was for the previous 5 years... Or possibly senior leadership isn’t happy with the pace of DC buildout over the last 5-years.
- roryirvine 3mo agoVery unlikely to be the technical build team at fault for that. Real estate, legal, permitting, utility connections, construction, plant fit out, testing and certification, security, customs and immigration, and shipping all need to happen first - and every one of those has room for huge amounts of uncertainty and delay, more so if you're doing it internationally. There aren't many shortcuts that you can take when you're dealing with a complex combination of hardware, property, and law.
- fidotron 3mo agoTechnical staff are easiest to pin the blame on in any given situation. All those other fields require enormously more people skills and political inclination. If you are in an org like that and there is an effort to pin something on technical people inappropriately the reaction when there's solid push back approaches total hysterical breakdown since it's so unexpected. Even if the tech staff "win" they'll be marked for the rest of their time there.
- JSR_FDED 3mo agoCouldn’t happen to a nicer company
- Zigurd 3mo agoInterviewed there early in my career. The vibe was very much off. Ran into the same vibe many years later when a company that acquired a company I founded got bought by Computer Associates. Places where doing good work and making good things seemed way down the list of priorities. I get the feeling I was pitied for naïveté.
- UltraSane 3mo agoThat is the exact vibe I got working at a state government IT department.
- kishkash 3mo ago[dead]
- bravetraveler 3mo ago> I get the feeling I was pitied for naïveté. I have to assume so, sadly. Peers have said my preference towards quality over quantity is why I haven't "launched" [ahead of them? unclear]... as if they're nicely retired with drinks on the beach, or something. Completely blind to the fact that our priorities differ and, well, reality/status. Long way to say, turn the performative pity right around on 'em. Their boss is a lawn mower: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=38m33s https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=38m33s
- ChrisArchitect 3mo agoRelated: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987863
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- ece 3mo agohttps://archive.md/voqjr https://archive.md/voqjr
- cmiles8 3mo agoOracle is increasingly looking like the Lehman Brothers of the AI boom. One day it will all go pop and the cards will start crumbling elsewhere in the industry.
- sudonem 3mo agoExcept for the part where Oracle is so deeply embedded into the US government, and Larry Ellison is connected enough that they will be granted any and all bailouts necessary to prevent this (while everyone pretends not to notice that such bailouts are socialism)
- le-mark 3mo agoLarry’s son runs paramount now, and given he’s driving it to become the next Fox News challenger, it’s a given the current admin will give them a sweet heart deal.
- tecleandor 3mo agoAnd seems like he has been forcing migrations to Oracle Cloud into at least some of the daughter companies he has bought, even when they've been having way more problems. OCI needs some clients to fill data centers!
- khriss 3mo agoYeah, but they'll need to time their bust for before Jan next year. There is a significantly lower chance of a Democratic congress being as sympathetic.