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Comment by mcast | Hacker News Reader

This would be a really nice restaurant/bar idea, too bad cell phone jammers are illegal in the US. Maybe you could layer your walls with foil to naturally block antennas?

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There are bars with Faraday cages built into the walls to achieve this effect, here’s one https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-36943686.amp

It seems like it’s probably legal. Might want to provide a reception-available area to give people the option of stepping out to check their phone, similar to a smoking area.

To really drive home the point, make the phone area also an actual smoking area.

I know it's not good in aggregate, but I miss smokey bars, even though I don't smoke myself. The smoke made everything look sort of softer, and the smoke hid some other odours of bars. :-)

There was also a defacto "tradition" on campus, you saw coats and shirts on balconies and then you knew they'd been to a bar last night. :-D

Smokers, while smoking, are also great company. They're so happy...

I thought I did too, but now I live somewhere where there are plenty of smoky bars, and the novelty wore off quickly. It's just a pain having to deal with clothes drenched in smoke after an evening out, when you have experienced not ever having to deal with that. Knowing that all bars are smokefree is much easier than having to remember which ones are and which aren't.

Or you did miss it, and now you don't.

Maybe this could be like, neo brutalism. Purposefully use materials in locations that are cel reception dead zones.

If you wanna get all covert & secret agent ish, then have data harvesting agents plant lil doohickeys that extend range lol. Now you got some neo noir sci-fi cyberpunk espionage actions a-brewin.

They do stuff like this at defcon

So like, build a bar out of whatever they use in Walmart or BJs.

I swear every time I go to one of them, my phone loses its mind and I’m forced to use their wifi.

AFAIK, while active signal jammers are illegal, passive signal jammers are legal. You should be fine just covering your walls in chickenwire (though this works for wifi frequencies, not sure about cellular frequencies).

Mesh blocks everything as long as the holes in the mesh are no larger than 1/10th of the wavelength

No, the mesh doesn’t block everything. In the case of using your rule of thumb (1/10th wavelength), it’ll reduce the signal strength by about 33db if my math is right.

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