Never Oracle : microblogmemes

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 240 points 3 days ago (5 children)

I am moderately surprised that this didn’t have anything to do with Trump or Elon Musk. I was pretty curious what activist organization Erik Uden ran. But, the punchline wasn’t that, and was in the Mastodon replies.

Interestingly, two days before Oracle deleted my account and all servers associated with it, I publicly criticized Oracle's CEO in a viral post for promising dystopian AI surveillance technology to his investors.

https://mastodon.de/@ErikUden/113879369270806353

What a weird coincidence

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 106 points 3 days ago

Sounds about right for Oracle. I worked for a company that got bought by Oracle, and the support ticketing system we used was owned by Salesforce. Now, Larry Ellison hates Salesforce. So everyone was told to eliminate use of all Salesforce software.

Only problem was the Oracle software they wanted me to switch to - Service Center - was terrible. It was designed for massive call centers, not my team of five. It had almost zero automation, and the UX was circa 1985.

So I had a meeting with the Service Center team to go over my concerns. One feature I needed was an autocomplete field for ticket macros. This let us quickly process messages in our workflow. And it was just an autocomplete field, something I'd built myself dozens of times.

The Service Center folks acted like they'd never seen anything like that. They said it would take a year to add that feature to their product, but management still said I had to switch. So my boss, who had my back, got it thrown up the chain of command at Oracle. And then again. And again.

After a year and a half of this, averaging about a meeting a quarter, I finally got on the phone with an EVP who asked a very good question: "How much is this costing us per year?"

"$5,000" I said

"Why are you wasting my time with this?" she said

"Good question" I said.

I ended up getting to keep my ticketing software. I don't know if Service Center has autocomplete fields yet.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 60 points 3 days ago (2 children)

What a weird coincidence

There's a really good chance it IS coincidence. Oracle Cloud has a history of straight up deleting "always free" tier VMs and data in Oracle Cloud. This has been going on for years.

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 2 days ago (3 children)

But he said he was paying: https://mastodon.de/@ErikUden/113930315726322526

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[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 3 days ago

Does that include permabanning the users too?

[–] psmgx@lemmy.world 49 points 3 days ago

What a weird coincidence

Those coincidences are going to keep happening unless you start Mario Brothering CEOs

[–] archonet@lemy.lol 44 points 3 days ago

Larry Ellison being a contentious, petty cunt? Must be a day ending in y.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I think the Oracle CEO was the original CEO asshole before the current batch became the new big thing. No that it means that he's actually deleting accounts left and right, but he's been a dick before it was cool.

[–] Shardikprime@lemmy.world 23 points 2 days ago

[–] Venator@lemmy.nz 28 points 2 days ago

a good reminder to back up your shit regardless of what service you're using.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 122 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Honestly it's so annoying we just can't natively crossposting from mastodon and we have to keep using screenshots.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 24 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Could someone reply with tagging the community?

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Sadly no. Replies don't open new posts

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[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 14 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Would be cool if there was a way to basically display a toot with mastadon-like formatting simply by linking it in Lemmy. Since it's all in the Fediverse it could even display the live number of likes, boosts, etc. and provide an easy link to the toot author's profile

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 7 points 2 days ago

You have my support. I don't do twitter-like feeds (never got the appeal), but absolutely love the content on Mastodon. Having that content on my Lemmy feed would be golden.

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[–] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Once had Optimum (the ISP) do this to a business I was working with. Just yeeted all their email accounts and their contents and all backups thereof one day. Declared it was because no user on the account was accessing their email via the webmail system so all the email was nuked for inactivity. IMAP and POP do not count, apparently.

Short version, do not use Optimum unless they are the only option, and if they are the only option seriously consider moving to fix that.

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 56 points 3 days ago (3 children)

It's the problem with their "always free" virtual machines. Use too much, and they delete it for abuse. Use just a little, and they delete it for inactivity.

Those aren't free because Oracle is benevolent, but simply because probably they had a contract with Ampere to purchase millions of those arm server CPUs and they have vacancy

They're "free" in the hope that they will catch a whale: someone gets used to their infrastructure with a test, then spin more paid virtual machines

If in a specific datacenter, suddenly a whale is asking more resources, the free ones are getting the cut

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ah but this guy said he was paying them, in this reply on Mastodon, and that in fact they didn't even stop the charge for next month.

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[–] pero@lemm.ee 34 points 3 days ago (9 children)

As someone who had that misfortune to work woth their products, this tracks just great. Honestly. I've used their Apex and SQL developer. Both of them are unintuitive to use, inconsistent, lacking features, and just a complete resource hogs in their own ways. Makes me wonder how they are still keeping themselves afloat, considering the abhorrent state and quality their products are.

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[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 41 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Not just oracle. Couple years ago Google nuked an Australian pension fund cloud environment with no way to restore. Just poof all data gone.

[–] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That was mistake on Google part if I remember correctly, it wasn't intentional.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Oopsie, the photos of your dead wife/husband/father/mother/pet/children are all gone. Pleasure doing bussiness with you! 🤗

[–] humble_pete_digger@lemm.ee 6 points 2 days ago

We're sowwwie.

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Pretty sure Google did restore it, no? It was Google's fuckup, but there were backups.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No, the org had their own backups because of compliance reasons.

[–] Vivendi@lemmy.zip 13 points 2 days ago

thank fuck! Guidelines are written in blood, and lost bytes

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 67 points 3 days ago (1 children)

ORACLE: One Raging Asshole Called Larry Ellison

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[–] DragonsInARoom@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Nice to know that they go above and beyond to uphold GDPR

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

We don't move your data across borders... Because we don't have it any more!

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 days ago

Oracle cares so much about your privacy they delete your data before you even send a request.

[–] outerspace@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Google, meta, apple, they all will do the same. I had it with vercel and ebay. This is corporations abusing their power, no accountability.

[–] Luvs2Spuj@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Something about eggs in one basket.

[–] Theonetheycall1845@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Two baskets of eggs? Have you seen how much they cost?

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[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 32 points 3 days ago

This is exactly why you don't use anything from Oracle, especially free stuff like OCP. If you think you're not going to regret it eventually, you're fucking wrong.

[–] dx1@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

https://gizmodo.com/larry-ellisons-oracle-started-as-a-cia-project-1636592238

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

TikTok being forced to host on Oracle instead of Google/Microsoft all but confirms that Oracle is CIA Cloud.

[–] LemoineFairclough@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If one copy of all of your data is deleted, you should be able to recover it.

Maintain three copies of your data: This includes the original data and at least two copies.
Use two different types of media for storage: Store your data on two distinct forms of media to enhance redundancy.
Keep at least one copy off-site: To ensure data safety, have one backup copy stored in an off-site location, separate from your primary data and on-site backups.

https://www.veeam.com/blog/321-backup-rule.html

Someone that was following best practices would have regularly made a copy of their data and stored it somewhere that doesn't depend on anything Oracle does, since I'd consider depending on Oracle to store all of your data to be storing all your data at one site.

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Historically, the only thing Oracle ever made which was good was their database, and even that is only worth it beyond a certain size of dataset and number of simultaneous requests being served.

[–] daddy32@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Nice try, larry. While their database is completely decent, you cannot use it beyond certain size/performance requirements because that would require buying yet another yacht for the fucker.

[–] daq@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They didn't make Mysql if that's what you're referring to and Oracle DB was nothing revolutionary.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I think your most demanding use of databases was in tiny environments with tiny datasets and relaxed performance metrics compared to my own experience in designing systems that include databases.

MySQL and Oracle DB are totally different beasts for totally different needs, even if they're both relational databases.

Further, the Oracle DB predates MySQL.

MySQL was created exactly because at the time there were either these massive Enterprise Class behemoth expensive databases such as Oracle DB and IBM's Db2 or stuff like Access and hacked Excel sheets being used as "databases", so there really wasn't a proper database for things like inventory systems for small and mid-sized companies - they either used Access which was a joke (didn't even had Transactions, so prone to get corrupted) or they paid a lot for licenses for the big databases which also required expensive machines to run them on.

One could say that MySQL made a lot of the modern Internet possible because it was Open Source and ran on Linux so you could for free make a dynamic website (say, a small online store) on top of a stack with it at the bottom (and Apache at the top and some custom middle layer in something things like PHP - remember that these were the 90s and Python only became popular later) on a pretty basic Linux server somewhere and that was enough until you got really big. You could do it with Oracle DB at the bottom also, but it was expensive and not really worth it unless you were serving tens or hundred of thousands or requests per minute.

That said, I agree that Oracle DB wasn't revolutionary, it just worked well with all kinds of loads, even extreme ones, as long as you knew what you were doing.

The point I was making was that the Oracle DB was the only decent product Oracle ever created, not that it was revolutionary.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

A couple other entertaining Access facts: 1) Access databases did at least have an audit table - which was manually editable; 2) Access databases were used by the Diebold electronic voting machines that were in use in numerous states during the 2000 presidential election cycle. It's possible that 1 and 2 are unrelated.

On a more amusing note, I remember making fun of Access on StackOverflow around 2008 or so and running afoul of a dude who was still making a living doing Access work. I've never been more fearful that a person online was going to track me down IRL and attempt to kill me.

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[–] Eyedust@sh.itjust.works 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

My much brainier than me friend was telling me about the courses he was taking to apply to Oracle. I had to break it to him how far down they've fallen, and not to expect anything working for them. He's smart, but not in the right social channels like the Fediverse to see what the real people are saying.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

All of the tech people everywhere know about Oracle. You'd have to be actively avoiding the info, or be coming in from a completely different subculture at this point.

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[–] Shardikprime@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

On the one hand, sure, oracle rep could have handled it better

But on the other hand...

The TOS do say you are only eligible to sign up once

Now, on the not telling you the reason why the shutoff happened, it's totally logical. No company will let you know what was the TOS violation to help you or others to avoid future detection and commit fraud. Anyone on IT knows this.

Not saying the guy did it, but apparently Oracle believes they did. It's the same as Google. One simple fuck up on an add in adwords and your account is screwed for life. Could be for the most innocuous of things, like a flag raised by usage patterns, or going to the extremes, a possible compromised instance got nuked preemptively

In any case always remember that the resources occupied in a free instance may and will be freed up when needed without warning.

And if stuff is THAT IMPORTANT, always go on prem , with at least two different providers for cloud services and backup

Also, read the terms of service. It's not that hard

[–] stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

what's oracle?

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 68 points 3 days ago

One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.

[–] kalleboo@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm not a fan of victim blaming but who the heck thought it was a good idea to use Oracle to begin with??!??

[–] nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I use oracle always free server. It's actually some generous resources.... but yeah, It's oracle. I intentionally have a backup script run regularly for precisely this case. It's saved me $1200 in costs* so far so I'll keep freeloading until they screw me over

*based on what i was paying previously at another cloud service

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