Hey! I'm Rithwik, one of the authors of the article, happy to answer questions etc!
I guess if I have one question, it would be... what else are you planning to do with your new Faraday cage?
Imagine typing in coordinates or picking a location on a map, and then suddenly your phone or any other device is at that location inside the cage, by a combination of GPS, cellular and WiFi spoofing
My former manager called it a portal haha: https://x.com/masadfrost/status/1856467695606345756
We've got some ideas for the Faraday cage—a whole bunch of networks research and hacking that we can do without messing up live systems! It's also really nice to be able to test a device in isolation, without worrying about whether it's phoning back home in some way.
This is a great attitude in the face of a pretty sad 2024 reality: that the manufacturer of a device is expected to intentionally go out of its way to remotely stop users from using the device they bought in the way they want to use it.
I can't give the hearing aid feature a test because it's not available in either Canada or Spain, but I am wondering what the difference is (if any) between the hearing aid region lock and other geo-locked/geo-enabled features Apple has.
I ended up transferring my account to an EU account (pro-tip, you may be on the phone with Apple support for 6+ hours if the automation fails). I still have access to both US-specific features (like Apple Cash in USD and the feature in this article) and EU-specific features (like the new app store stuff).
I'm surprised that this worked for you, my main Apple ID is a German one, with active CC/subscriptions/etc; but I am physically in Japan and definitely don't get to play Fortnite on my phone.
I'd even be happy to repeat your cellular signals here in the EU, so you connect to EU towers.
That would be entertaining to see if it worked.
Since you did not end up having bought yourself a very expensive set of earphones, what earphones do you use — or want to get?
I've just been hacking away at things since I was in middle school, am lucky that there's some transfer. LLMs have also been a huge unlock—really cool to be able to try things at near speed of thought!
> what earphones do you use — or want to get? I'm very happy with my Shure Aonic 3s, a very loyal IEMs guy!
As for the sound quality, a few of our grandparents have tried it, and while they say it sounds 'different', it's not necessarily bad. Grandma was actually quite content even with just the old EQ settings that shipped pre iOS 18 for folks with hearing issues.
Thanks for the kind words!
If I can ask -- what program did you use to generate the code maps in your article?
Think someone has already linked it below!
The first prototype was just aluminium foil, tape and hope, but we wanted something more solid so we built one out of n°100 copper mesh and some 2020 aluminium extrusions!