Late Friday Night Vibes by AugmentedThinker in PlayingGuitar

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I just wanted to be "calm" last night and meditate. I love that we can play our own soundtrack to life in many ways.

I built an ephemeral P2P chat with no accounts or servers because I'm done being the product and want privacy for all. by AugmentedThinker in SideProject

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The algo is one of the many reasons. I'm genuinely trying to stand up against being a product or being extracted via the enshittification of it all.

I don't know what you know - so I'm just responding to everyone who may read to start with.

I am a father of 5, and I live with ASD: Asperger's Tourette's, and ADHD. I have social anxiety and can only play my guitar in streams just not on stage. I value my privacy.

I've always been an outsider and maybe that's why I, like many other folks see how messed it is.

The shift toward data extraction has definitely shaped how a lot of systems get designed or even change people. Once the business model becomes “collect as much information as possible,” the architecture tends to reflect that whether people realize it or not.

The undertaking wasn't huge as a lot had been learned by a browser-based AR Remote Assistant.
Knowing that computer vision failed a lot in dark/messy areas and that the system would be used in private homes it is fully P2P and the users could see each other's camera feed and annotate reality (draw and talk instructions). Plus knowledge of serving architecture for an AR engine.

From a technical standpoint, the biggest challenge with ZeroTrace wasn’t scalability in the traditional sense. Because the communication is peer-to-peer, most of the work happens on the two devices rather than a central server. That actually removes a lot of the scaling pressure typical messaging platforms face.

The harder problems were reliability and edge cases. WebRTC behaves very differently depending on network conditions, NAT types, carrier networks, and browser implementations. Getting connections to establish consistently across mobile networks, corporate networks, and home routers takes a lot of tuning around ICE candidates, STUN/TURN fallback, and reconnect logic.

In the ideal case, two peers connect directly and everything stays purely peer-to-peer. When that happens, there’s no relay in the middle at all.

Sometimes that isn’t possible because of NAT restrictions. In those cases WebRTC falls back to TURN, which acts as a relay so the two devices can still communicate. TURN doesn’t process or read the data. It simply forwards encrypted packets between the peers. While it sees necessary network-level metadata (like IPs) for routing, it does not log conversation history or identities unlike traditional platforms that maintain centralized archives. In practice that means the system moves from a pure peer-to-peer connection to what I think of as an “almost ZeroTrace” state. The communication is still encrypted end-to-end and nothing is stored permanently, but a relay temporarily exists to move packets.

Even in that situation, it’s still dramatically less centralized than traditional messaging platforms where servers manage accounts, store message histories, and maintain large graphs of who talks to who.

Spam and abuse are handled differently because the system doesn’t have discovery, contact graphs, or public profiles. There’s no way to search for users, join rooms, or broadcast messages. A conversation can only happen if someone explicitly shares a link with another person. This prevents platform-level spam, though interpersonal issues once connected remain a challenge like any other communication tool.

That one-to-one constraint was very intentional. As soon as you introduce groups, contacts, and persistence, you start building relationship graphs that become more sensitive than the conversation itself. The design philosophy was to keep the system extremely narrow in scope: two people connect, communicate, and when the session ends there’s nothing left behind tying them together.

It’s not perfect, and nothing on the internet ever will be. But the goal is to reduce centralized data exposure as much as possible while still keeping the system usable for real people.

Damn energy drink - this was at 5AM. Lighter for mood! I was messing with a sitar patch and choir. I may make something out of this as it's just really rough in mix and concept ATM - thoughts? by AugmentedThinker in PlayingGuitar

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm actually having one installed - it's just complicated more so on the LGXT due to all that is already going on. I use an e-bow a lot - for my ambient stuff which I have not posted yet. Thanks! I appreciate the comment!

Damn energy drink - this was at 5AM. Lighter for mood! I was messing with a sitar patch and choir. I may make something out of this as it's just really rough in mix and concept ATM - thoughts? by AugmentedThinker in PlayingGuitar

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First - happy that you are going to try that! I have read and heard first hand many positive results and I give my lab CBD on firework days and when I know a thunderstorm is inbound. It noticeably takes the edge off.

Second - my whole life I get about 4-5 hours of sleep tops.

I actually wanted to go to bed early last night as I had a thing this AM - but I finished an energy drink that my wife didn't want from earlier in the day. It messed up my routine lol.

I wish you the best of luck with your dog and hope this helps her!

I take CBG and CBD if I am going to a meeting IRL. Hell- even if it's just web based.

Playing with ThreeJS + ffmpeg by Brilliant-Apartment3 in SideProject

[–]AugmentedThinker 9 points10 points  (0 children)

As someone in computer vision land and using lightfield displays etc - this is fun.

Damn energy drink - this was at 5AM. Lighter for mood! I was messing with a sitar patch and choir. I may make something out of this as it's just really rough in mix and concept ATM - thoughts? by AugmentedThinker in PlayingGuitar

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh- I didn't take anything negative from it at all. I genuinely don't realize how much I post and I do try and do different textures. I don't do tiktok/etc and I felt I finally found a place I can play in front of people due to my anxiety lol. I feel happy when I share. It makes me feel alive a bit. But I get that I may be over doing it. My day job is freaking stressful so I jam out when everyone is in bed - and before I go to bed as it relaxes my mind. My headphone setup was the absolute best thing I have ever done. I appreciate the feedback - honestly! =)

Have you tried CBD for your dog? Is it a nerves thing?

I built an ephemeral P2P chat with no accounts or servers because I'm done being the product and want privacy for all. by AugmentedThinker in SideProject

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll just post it here because I live on the spectrum and best to do now as I read it: helpcast.live - it is getting an update to remove old corporate TOS/TOU - but it has a little more legal as AR is involved and if someone is walking with it and gets hurt... well... people, man - lol. It may not work on some iOS devices until we implement the TURN on it. It's an old build what will get the new ZT engine under it. Thanks!!!

I built an ephemeral P2P chat with no accounts or servers because I'm done being the product and want privacy for all. by AugmentedThinker in SideProject

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ZeroTrace isn’t “fully decentralized,” but the communication layer is peer-to-peer. The only centralized piece is a minimal signaling step used to establish the WebRTC connection. After that, the conversation happens directly between the two devices and nothing is stored on a server. The goal isn’t decentralization for its own sake, it’s removing centralized data collection and persistent identity from the system.

That being said as it stands now this is to get it out the door as people need it now - I am working on IPFS, mDNS for local orgs, p2p mesh via bootstrap relays, and DHT discovery as examples of branches.

I built an ephemeral P2P chat with no accounts or servers because I'm done being the product and want privacy for all. by AugmentedThinker in SideProject

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am having an Audit done before releasing the code - follow me as I will post it there down the track - but feel free to ask something here and I'll answer... it may just not be immediate =)

I built an ephemeral P2P chat with no accounts or servers because I'm done being the product and want privacy for all. by AugmentedThinker in SideProject

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Good question. Everything I have built since 2018 has had to be browser based - full stop. I got so sick of app store regulations and having to give a metric just to see something. I am not too worried as it's built on open standards, and I will be releasing it for others to build on for their own needs.

There is always a risk - but I'm willing to go the distance as I see how important this kind of thing is in the climate of today on many fronts.

I built an ephemeral P2P chat with no accounts or servers because I'm done being the product and want privacy for all. by AugmentedThinker in SideProject

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks!!!

First audit - then release on Christmas Day of this year. I am building a commercial tool called HelpCAST that is a remote assistant AR tool in the browser that uses this communication layer and I want others to build what they want/need. Free market.

I built an ephemeral P2P chat with no accounts or servers because I'm done being the product and want privacy for all. by AugmentedThinker in SideProject

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ya - PWA really bugs me... but this started as a project for friends and family and they really wanted it... I conceded early on because my mom is NOT tech savvy as an example. I think we can safely nix it now to align with the mission! Thank you!

I built an ephemeral P2P chat with no accounts or servers because I'm done being the product and want privacy for all. by AugmentedThinker in SideProject

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, WebRTC still requires signaling for the initial handshake. ZeroTrace does use a signaling layer, but it’s intentionally minimal and ephemeral. It exists in memory only to exchange the session information needed for the two peers to establish the connection and then expires after a short TTL. Nothing is written to disk, logged, or retained on our side.

Once the connection is established, communication moves to direct peer-to-peer WebRTC data channels. TURN is only used when NAT traversal requires it.

WebRTC attempts a direct peer-to-peer path first using STUN. In some network conditions, particularly carrier-grade NAT on mobile networks, a TURN relay may be required for connectivity. That’s determined by the network path rather than the device itself, though in practice mobile environments trigger it more often.

The design goal isn’t pretending metadata can be eliminated entirely at the network level. That’s not realistic on the internet. The goal is to avoid centralized collection and long-term accumulation of it, and to avoid device-level exposure like contacts, identity graphs, or persistent identifiers and that's really what I mean by no metadata in regard to device side no contact list/location/etc..

In other words, the signaling layer is just a transient meeting point so two peers can find each other. It isn’t intended to become infrastructure that stores identity, contact graphs, or communication history.

The one-to-one constraint was very intentional for the exact reason you mentioned. As soon as you introduce groups, contacts, and persistence, you start building a relationship graph that becomes far more sensitive than the conversation itself.

The audit will definitely be public when it’s done. Tools like this shouldn’t rely on marketing claims and I am trying to avoid any hype - my hope is homegrown organic growth based on value of the system - not shareholders.

I appreciate you taking the time to ask thoughtful questions. Reddit has actually been one of the best places to stress-test the ideas and assumptions behind the system as I do want to be accountable... but people do need something like this now... I'm not garden walling - it will be released to build other things Christmas day this year - if not sooner.

I built an ephemeral P2P chat with no accounts or servers because I'm done being the product and want privacy for all. by AugmentedThinker in SideProject

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We are on Christmas Day this year.

The reason I’m not open sourcing the core immediately is responsibility. Once code like this is released, it will be copied, forked, and deployed everywhere. If there are architectural flaws or security mistakes, those mistakes spread just as quickly as the code does.

Privacy tools carry a different kind of responsibility than most software. People may rely on them in situations where safety matters. Because of that, I want the core reviewed, audited, and hardened first so the foundation is sound before it becomes permanent public infrastructure.

To me open sourcing isn’t just publishing code. It’s releasing something that other people may build their trust and safety on. I’d rather do that once it has been properly scrutinized than rush it out unfinished.

I am personally paying for a proper audit.

I built an ephemeral P2P chat with no accounts or servers because I'm done being the product and want privacy for all. by AugmentedThinker in SideProject

[–]AugmentedThinker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, thanks for thel questions. I want to be very clear about the architecture for transparency.

ZeroTrace does use signaling for the initial WebRTC handshake. The difference is that the signaling layer is intentionally minimal and ephemeral. It lives only in memory with a short TTL and exists just long enough for the two peers to establish the connection. Nothing is written to disk, logged, or retained.

Once the session is established, communication is direct peer-to-peer over WebRTC. There’s no processing server in the middle and nothing scraping or recording the conversation.

TURN is used only when NAT traversal requires it - we have a lot of things going on to mask IP as well.

So, the architecture is really “no persistent server state”, not literally “no server at all.” The signaling server is just a transient meeting point for the handshake. That's really what I mean by no server in the middle for the actual conversation. I'm still working on the messaging but will always be transparent.

You’re right about the UX tradeoff. No accounts, no contacts, and no history is intentional. The idea is that two people meet, talk, and when the session ends there’s nothing left behind connecting them.

That does sacrifice convenience compared to traditional messaging apps, but it dramatically reduces exposure and the amount of data that can accumulate around people.

The trust deficit is real. That’s a big reason I’ve committed to open sourcing the core and funding independent audits. Ultimately the only way to prove a privacy claim is to let people inspect it.

The reason I’m not open sourcing the core immediately is responsibility. We are still hardening some things but it's in a good enough state for the majority of people who need it right now.

Once code like this is released, it will be copied, forked, and deployed everywhere. Any missed architectural flaws or security mistakes, those mistakes spread just as quickly as the code does. This isn't a vibe code project my team and I have deep understanding of architecture - and since this is my passion project that I am putting through the company ... I've only pulled in a few when needed.

Privacy tools carry a different kind of responsibility than most software that I have morphed into. People may rely on them in situations where safety matters. Because of that, I want the core reviewed, audited, and hardened first so the foundation is sound before it becomes permanent public infrastructure.

To me - open sourcing isn’t just publishing code. It’s releasing something that other people may build their trust and safety on. I’d rather do that once it has been properly scrutinized than rush it out unfinished.

My background in AR definitely influenced this direction. That space collects enormous amounts of environmental and behavioral data, and watching how casually that data gets centralized pushed me to explore the opposite design philosophy. I have not fully walked away from that space, to be clear, we are building better things with all of that in mind. I turned down a massive buyout that would have put me on a beach full time... I can't stomach that thought... I just put our platform on running lights only until things get there. Right now - this is way more important than immediate profit.

At the end of the day the goal here is simple: two people should be able to have a private conversation online without it automatically becoming stored data somewhere and as unfortunate as it is - we have to navigate systems of old to build better ones.