Why You Should Self-Host Everything

use homelabs to experiment in. It's a sandbox environment where if you break it, you fix it, and more importantly it isn't costing money while it's down.

Pretty in line with what I’ve said. It’s for experimentation and is meant for it to be ok to break. You’re trying really very hard to ascribe meaning that isn’t there. I don’t really know why you’re trying so very hard just to be wrong. another hint you’ll notice here is how r/homelab is its own subreddit apart from r/selfhosted

i wasn't talking about a homelab, as evidenced by the fact that i said the most broad, least specific form of lab, laboratory.

So you were just talking nonsense about something unrelated, got it. You tried to compare a homeland to the only definition of a laboratory that doesn’t apply to a technical environment. Very big brain move there.

yeah, that's my point, i was playing by your rules of the definition, which are very explicitly strict.

No, you’re just confusing technical terms and phrases for their literal equivalents. Making arguments about things that were never said. Whatever drugs you are on must be some good shit because the world as you seem to see it is all Willy Wonka.

I.E. literally anything you don't have strong attachment to, because unlike the corpo world, you can simply do whatever the fuck you want with your hardware, you don't even have to test shit in a testing environment if you want to.

No not at all. By that logic, I know some pretty big global companies with production environments that can be considered “home labs” in your eyes. The defining characteristic is the purpose and intent for the environment.

It’s very simple, not nearly as complicated or vague as you’re trying to make it out to be. If your purpose for the environment is to experiment, and nothing on that environment is of any importance to you, I.E. you could wipe the whole thing clean in a moments notice and lose nothing of value, you have a home lab.

If on the other hand you have a Nextcloud instance running on it with files you expect to be there, and would be distraught if they were gone, you do not have a home lab.

Very simple. Nothing complex or vague or overly explicit about it.