Use tailscale for host nodes, use tailscale docker container in a compose stack with an app that you sidecar to. That way that app is on your tailnet as if it is its own computer. Use tailscale serve for reverse proxying support of the apps. Then, setup a vps node (I use linodes $5 node) with tailscale and configure that to be your DMZ into your tailnet.

For DMZ, use Caddy, UFW, and fail2ban. Also take advantage of ACLs in the Tailscale admin console to only have the VPS able to route traffic to specific apps you want to expose. My current project is to work in Authelia into this setup so a user logs into one exposed app and is able to traverse to other exposed apps through header / token authentication.

Oh also, segment the tailnet using different authentication keys. Each host node should have its own key, all the apps on a host node should have a shared key, and all public facing clients should have a common shared key. That way in case of compromise you can revoke the affected keys without bringing down your network.

When you end up having a mini homelab look into komo.do for container orchestration over the overkill options like kubernetes or portainer

hackernews its like reddit but the user submitted links are tech and research of hardware heavy. A good portion of my RSS feed is from blogs that posts were submitted to there.

Not as impossible sounding. I mean I would never attempt it but you might be able to get away with it using a stencil, solder paste and one of those fancy toaster ovens with a broil setting. ROI would suck since you are probably gonna fail the first couple of times.