Caveats: AWS vendor framing quarantined; build-vs-buy vendor cost pages flagged; DrPeering single-source; sysadmin wages needs-verification

The honest summary of source quality across this brief:

• AWS "we cut prices N times" framing (AWS "we've cut prices 100+ times since 2006" framing — quarantined as vendor self-congratulation) — vendor self-congratulation. Quarantined. Only the dated launch price ($0.15/GB for Amazon S3 launched March 14, 2006 at $0.15/GB — object storage as a metered utility; $0.10/hr for Amazon EC2 launched as limited public beta August 25, 2006 — single m1.small instance at $0.10/hour) and the current published price are primary.
• Build-vs-buy SaaS vendor cost pages (SPP, Agency Handy, Space-O, Kavara — see SPP (2025): custom client portal $20k–$50k initial development + $10k–$25k/yr maintenance; Agency Handy $25k–$60k all-in over 6–12 months and Custom dashboards/analytics apps: $80,000–$250,000 depending on real-time/data-source complexity (Kavara)) — incentive to make custom builds look expensive. Used for ceiling figures but flagged.
• DrPeering transit series (Internet transit collapsed from $1,200/Mbps (1998) to ~$5/Mbps (2010) — ~240× per DrPeering/Norton series) — single-source; 2011+ values are author projections, not observed.
• Pre-2007 dedicated/colo prices (Pre-cloud dedicated/colocation pricing 2004–2007 — managed dedicated $250–$1,400/month; budget $89–$199; 1U colo ~$50/month) — forum-quoted invoices on Web Hosting Talk; archived Rackspace pricing pages not retrievable.
• Early-2000s BLS sysadmin wage (Network & Computer Systems Administrator BLS median: ~$51K–$58K (early 2000s, needs-verification) rising to $96,800 (May 2024)) — exact 2002/2004 figure ($51K–$58K range) not rendered from primary BLS OEWS at brief deadline; needs-verification.
• Firebase Auth exact launch date (Amazon Cognito and Firebase Auth — 2014-era managed identity peers to Auth0) — not separately confirmed beyond Firebase's 2014 acquisition by Google.
• AI-assisted coding magnitude — deliberately not researched in depth (R2 — Keep AI-assisted coding at the margin; it lowers assembly labor recently but is not a structural driver).

Practical posture for Candid: every published cost claim gets a source label and, where applicable, a vendor-incentive flag. See R6 — Flag the vendor incentive on every cost claim — AWS price-cut count, SaaS build-vs-buy ranges, agency portal estimates.