Tag: Home Lab
-
Hardware Wallet Recovery Mistakes in 2026
The hardware wallet recovery mistake has become the loss the crypto holder has been quietly making, the loss the holder discovers the moment the holder tries to recover the wallet, the loss the recovery seed the holder thought was safe will not undo.
-
A Weekend Migration: Replacing One Cloud Service With a Self Hosted Alternative
We migrated a paid analytics service to a self hosted alternative and wrote down the actual time it took, the actual failures, and the actual cost. The Saturday afternoon is real. The Tuesday evening for DNS cutover is also real.
-
When to Self Host: The Honest Guide
The self host vs cloud decision in 2026 amounts to the decision the typical enterprise makes 5-10 times per year, with the decision affecting the cost, the control, the compliance, the reliability. The honest guide covers when the self host wins, when the cloud wins, and what the decision framework looks like for the typical…
-
Hardware: The Quiet Death of Repair, and Why It Matters
The average American household owned 21 connected devices in 2024. The same household replaced a primary device every 2.7 years. The average lifespan of the discarded device was 4.1 years. We are replacing things before they break.
-
Building a Home Lab in 2026: What I Actually Use and What I Would Skip
The home lab used to be the server in the closet running the outdated workstation. The 2026 version sits as the mini PC under the desk, the small NAS in the cupboard, the smart switch that knows what each device is, the homelab that teaches the things the production environment never gets to teach.
-
The Raspberry Pi Cluster in Production in 2026
A Raspberry Pi cluster looks like a toy until you wire it into the production system. Then it becomes a piece of the production system, and the question of whether to use it stops being a question of whether it can do the work and starts being a question of whether you trust the hardware…
-
The Firmware Attack Surface You Have Never Looked At
Every modern endpoint runs firmware that the operating system cannot see. The OS patch cadence is monthly. The firmware patch cadence is whenever the vendor bothers. Here is what is actually in your fleet, and what to do about it.
-
The Raspberry Pi in Production Is a Security Incident Waiting to Happen
The Raspberry Pi in a homelab is a learning tool. The Raspberry Pi in a production rack is an unmanaged device running unpatched firmware on the same network as the payment system. Here is what to do about it.
-
When Self Hosting Makes Sense, and When It Doesn’t
The self hosting decision has been the decision the developer community has been making for years, the decision the enterprise has started making again. The SaaS subscription the developer no longer trusts, the SaaS the developer can now host, the SaaS the developer is now running on the home server.
-
Self Hosting Email Is a Masochism Game
A field guide to self hosting email in 2026, with what the protocols look like, what the deliverability is going to look like, and the honest answer about whether the game is worth the candle.