Not depend on a specific corporation to access all your services for one.
A reverse proxy (I use nginx) will let you centralize certificates and allow the use of subdomains easily, without depending from a specific service provider like cloudflare.
Looks like you are are a lucky american with access to a real IP address, good for you, a luxury nowadays where CG-NAT is common place everywhere.
I have been far luckier than that all my life, I never had a drive fail on me, and I keep them a looong time.
Maybe once, 20 years ago, a drive failed? Can't really remember, but probably it did happen. Being on a Linux software RAID 1, just remove and plug a new drive, run an attach command and forget.
I have 4 6Tb HDDs which I got new from work: been running 24/7 for the last 6 years.
The 4Tb drives they replaced where running for the previous 10 years (bought new as well) and are still in a drawer, got replaced only for the opportunity to upgrade to 6tb.
If your refurbished last only 4 years, to be that is not a positive gain, you lost money. New drives should last 10 years in my personal (and debatable) experience. But I think those drives you bought will last more than 4 years.
I have been hosting my mail server for over 10 years. You need to study dkim, dmark and all the other stuff, but it can be done indeed and its not scary at all.
If the price is right for you, go for it. You will run containers and or VMs, so doesn't really matter what your bare metal is.
I would choose something where I can install Linux easily and nice and I am sure at the Mac mini price point you can build yourself an assembled mini-pc with beefer specs, but indeed it's more work and hassle.
The OS needs access to the keys accepted by the bl. Pixels have that, so graphene can relock. Other vendors don't give this opportunity, so Roms like los which support many devices, better be safe than sorry.
Try relock on a xiaomi device and you have unrecoverable hard brick.
Not a bad take per-se, but a bit condescending. While I agree and like the KISS paradigm, remember that no solution works at a lower complexity level of the problem itself.
So, define your problem clearly, find the simplest possible solution. Don't overcomplicate, I agree, but don't be fooled by false hopes.
Is it really simpler? Yes. Will it scale if I need it to? Maybe not, but will I really need for it to scale?
Cool idea!