Taggart :ifin: on Nostr: Yes, #SelfHosting is hard. It can be an enjoyable hobby, *and* it can be ...

Yes, #SelfHosting is hard. It can be an enjoyable hobby, *and* it can be cost-effective, depending on what you're hosting. But if you aren't going into it with prior experience as a system administrator, it's going to hurt.

I wrote a [whole book](https://taggartinstitute.org/p/the-homelab-almanac ) about how to do this the hard way. It's written that way so you learn how much work it all takes, but also how to do it well.

In my view, the primary purpose of a home *lab* is learning and experimentation. That's a different goal than self-hosting to avoid the cloud.

But honestly, this is just a very nerdy iteration of the fundamental rationale for communities: the pooling of resources to benefit all.

We could imagine a world in which communities (defined however you like) entrust their data to stewards they know, and all invest in the maintenance of equipment and services. We can imagine such a world, but of course the human effort required to build it is far greater than simply paying for a service with a modest monthly fee—and your privacy.

So both things are true. We cannot expect everyone to manage their own digital infrastructure to build a better world, but managing *our* digital infrastructure is probably necessary to build a better world.