I think its likely the codex price hike, not Ai
Most of their servers are processing and multiencoding with h264/h265, and even if people are moving away from that for av1 they have such a massive platform that they still have to utilize it even when most have moved on
Ill rerespond to this to a link to exactly what im talking about if I remember
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
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
Oh, come now... You really telling me you think they or any other multi-billion dollar corp won't frontload the costs and pocket the difference?
Or 'ease' the price increase in over a few quarters so that its not met with as harsh of backlash?