• Speaker: Jim Arasim
• Room: CC 202
• Time: Sat 4:00 pm – 4:30 pm

• Format: Workshop/Tutorium (all-day)
• Difficulty: Some experience required
• Track: Creative
• Additional Tags: Live Event
• Presenter Location: In-person
• Experience: first time speaking

Privacy shouldn't require trusting someone else's promises. This session demonstrates how to build communication and media platforms where privacy is architecturally guaranteed, not policy-based.

The talk covers two production projects: Stuffed Animal War (ephemeral real-time chat) and Analog Archive (self-hosted music streaming).

Both run on everything from $15 Raspberry Pi hardware to cloud deployments, proving that privacy-first design doesn’t require expensive infrastructure.

You’ll learn:

• Zero-persistence architecture patterns (no databases, no logs, no user tracking)
• WebSocket-based real-time communication with room isolation
• Deploying self-hosted services across hardware tiers
• Client-side processing to avoid server-side data collection
• Practical fallback mechanisms (auto-AP mode, graceful degradation)

Technical stack: Node.js, WebSockets, systemd services, Apache2 reverse proxy, Backblaze B2 integration

Takeaway: Working code, deployment strategies, and architectural patterns you can implement immediately. All projects are open source and production-tested. These systems have been running in production for years, serving real users who want communication tools without surveillance capitalism.

Target Audience:

• Self-hosting enthusiasts
• Privacy advocates
• Web developers interested in real-time applications
• System administrators deploying personal infrastructure
• Anyone building alternatives to commercial services