HomeAssistant and vlans are kind of the answer to most of the issues/concerns regarding smart devices this post has

I have to say though, I find anyone who leans too far either way to be extremely silly

Well chosen devices from reputable manufacturers can drastically improve quality of life

One big one for me was window blinds on a sun timer. Because after a decade, I was swapping from nights to days permanently having spent that past time swapping from nights to days every Wednesday and had signifcant issues both waking up and staying up on those days, and even now I still do

Having my bedroom windows open in the morning on their own to use natural lighting to wake me up has been extremely helpful for that, and then using HA that could be tied into external camera systems to close the windows automatically if a person or vehicle is detected within specific parameters, or having the ability to open my son's window if I hear him crying to be picked up from a nap but I can't immediately respond has been wonderful

Now there's also your Rings, your creepvacuumbots, any smart TV at all and any other host of problems with iot devices, but there are some gems that make life much better without the dark patterns we increasingly associate with connectes devices these days

And those servers are what process your Twitchs, your YouTubes, your Netflixs and etc services

Here's why it does matter

Most server hardware thats out there right now doesn't support av1 encoding, so all of those, literally tens of thousands of them in thousands of spread out data centers have to be replaced with brand new +$1,500 a pop cards that do support it before they can use it

Never owned an iPhone

Currently on android purely for alternative os's

Next phones for my family will either be Linux, if they hold the line, or iPhone if no one does

Why would anyone pick a garbage Android device if they're as locked down as iOS and costs as much?

Make it shitty, Google. I hope companies that behave as yours are get the same enshitification ending

As for damages

Say you have a old masonry structure like a masonry brick fence in the way of the easement

They can tear it down and will, and will not replace it with one of comparable quality if they bother to at all

Ive seen some beautiful 1950s work like that where it goes from amazing tradesmen quality masonry and iron fencing to jank 4x4's and basically chickenwire on the easement, even 2 sections of the masonry/iron fence would take thousands to fix properly from what they did and there's the likelihood they'll do it again in the future.

Those are homes of people on fixed incomes or investments. They usually can't keep fixing the damage. And those fences aren't really decorations, its not even slightly uncommon for people to die from dog maulings in my area. Happens a few times every single year

Say you have a road, driveway, etc? At some point you will have a massive random pothole or speedbump because they'll cut a trough right through it and fill it with asphalt not repour expensive concrete. I can in my neighborhood point out four locations where cable and fiber easement companies have done just that

Theres really no eli5, this is a purposely convoluted topic

Best I could offer you is recomemend you go look up the channels Lehto's Law and The Institute for Justice on YouTube

In the US, easements have a history of being abused to render large areas of privately owned land useless/unusable, to legally trespass, and to harass landowners

There's a reason for example that American Tribes fight especially hard to prevent easements from oil or rail or really any companies

Cable companies in particular have a reputation of destroying peoples properties, have numerous times now been given insane payouts to build the very infrastructure with taxes that they just bought and in those instances pocketed the money without even a slap on the wrist. Further their involvement indicates that any further infrastructure projects expanding that fiber are basically dead, and for any that exist they're going to be on life support

Those same bailout companies just got their hands on the easements that were allowed to go to a group who at the least didn't have that history of abuse, and precedent of the that deal going through so it is more likely to start happening in more places

All of those easements should be considered as dead space and new ones will have to be allocated when expansion is taken up by yet another company on 10 or 20 years when they prove they won't upgrade or properly maintain theirs to modern needs, that means further encroaching on people's property

Think of it like sidewalks that moved another 3-4 feet into people's yards every 10 or so years which you as a homeowner are not allowed to alter or use or complain when their representatives do so

So all of the easement agreements got pushed through by google, and are being taken over by entities who wouldn't have been able to get those easements due to commujity distrust of their company

I'd sue to have the easement revoked as a community, and for punitive damages hefty enough as a punch to Google's nose to prevent that type of bad behavior from happening in the future

Not chump change, not cost of operations. Actual punitive damages enough to cut out any profits from the transaction and then some

Look up easement abuse in the US on YouTube, Lehto's Law or Institute for Justice

From rail, to cable providers, to city municipalities, easements in the US have been utilized maliciously to destroy and seize peoples properties

Why bother asking permission?

In the States, enough people have proven uncivilized enough and willing enough to face the consequences that come with utilizing tools easily and cheaply available at their disposal so that trespassers and even politicians think twice before sending people to mess with other people's land without asking permission

Yeah

I agree with the misworded commenter

Europe ditches US Based tech and software for stuff they control, so they can better enforce their insane privacy invasion laws better more like

Let's not forget most of the swill age verification legislation around the globe is originating from the EU, and that privacy/encryption focused software groups are fleeing the region (see proton) due to their mallegislation

Unfortunately the most refined usage, and money dumped sector of Ai by far is image recognition

Its where all the money from Amazon and others has been dumped (Flock Surveillance, Amazon Ring, FedEx Trucks, Wal~Mart and your choice of store)

Surveillance, ALPR, Facial recognition, gait recognition, etc. It takes a massive amount of data

Go see how much space you need if you want to secure data from 10,000 cameras at 480p/720p/1080p for a few weeks, let alone a year or two

Ive been trying to migrate off since 2020

Communities I follow refuse to, and no other service is close to parity. Guilded was the closest until they allowed themselves to golden parachute with their Roblox purchase, so they're now not longer worth considering

Teamspeak and teamspeak6 is a joke, anyone who prefers it is off their rocker

I've been following Revolt/Stout, River on FreeNet since I found it on FUTO, and others but frankly all alternatives I've found suck for varius reasons

This paired with the bedrock gdk release and changes to the file path so that we don't need to use iobit unlocker to mod rtx files is some hella good vibes