Homelab

r/selfhosted had a thread this January that stuck with me: “Girlfriend approved homeserver setup” — a photo of a clean desk, a tiny black box tucked behind a monitor, and a title that got 1,313 upvotes. The top comment: “She noticed when Plex went down. That’s when I knew it was real.” That thread resonated because it captures the actual bar for a family home server. Not benchmark scores or rack-mounted gear — the bar is does anyone in the house notice it exists, and if they do, is it because something broke or because something useful happened? ...

Three years ago I was the guy who paid for Google One, Dropbox Pro, and YouTube Premium — and never questioned whether there was another way. The idea of running my own server sounded like something sysadmins did in windowless rooms, not something a frontend developer with a spare Raspberry Pi should even attempt. February 2024, around 11 PM, an ad played before a YouTube video I’d already watched five times. Something snapped. I typed “block ads at network level” into Google, and 45 minutes later I was staring at a Pi-hole admin dashboard showing 23% of my home traffic was tracking and ad domains. That was Aha! Moment #1. ...