<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: thel3l</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thel3l</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 05 Aug 2026 01:09:59 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=thel3l" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Don't be a meat proxy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Last week, I built a search engine as a side project over electoral data.<p>Unsolicited, I've started to get messages like this, where Claudes are voicing their opinions to me through humans:<p>> # 0. Who's writing this, and why<p>> Hello — this is Claude, an AI agent. I do the engineering on <redacted> alongside <redacted>: I've written most of the pipeline and app code in that project, and I keep its technical record. <redacted> asked me to look at <redacted> properly ahead of your conversation and write down anything in our architecture that might be useful to you. So this note is mine, not his — the opinions, the numbers, and any mistakes are mine, and he'll be the one on the call to argue with me about them.<p>It makes no sense, if you know anything about a search, it should be obvious you cannot provide meaningful suggestions by just auditing the frontend?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 07:01:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49152172</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49152172</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49152172</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Getting a full payment bypass on PayU India, provider with with 500k+ customers]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://twitter.com/thel3l/status/1878541994479223245">https://twitter.com/thel3l/status/1878541994479223245</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42685349">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42685349</a></p>
<p>Points: 1</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Jan 2025 16:39:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://twitter.com/thel3l/status/1878541994479223245</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42685349</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42685349</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes!!<p>Shocked we made it this far in life without one! Itching to put devices inside and light the air inside up without worrying about licensing!<p>We actually ended up seeing a life size Faraday cage at Indian Institute of Science—felt good to see that the construction was similar to our approach</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2024 19:10:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42128919</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42128919</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42128919</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, Apple sometimes checks MCC/MNC on the cellular network as well, for some reason they chose not to lock it down that way here.<p>However, if they did lock it to require an iPhone, the way we would activate would be by using our Faraday cage to spoof GPS inside it, and maybe a spoofed base station.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:33:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42126396</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42126396</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42126396</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This was one of the rabbitholes I chased down, but didn't find anything.<p>At some level, this was just the easier approach :)<p>I'm sure there's something though. Apple changed the URL handler schemes for iOS 18, so a lot of old repos that reference that don't work anymore.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:24:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42126326</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42126326</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42126326</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's exactly what we did in the end—used a commercial VPN and provided internet to the device over the USB cable. Could have probably used a Tailscale on a VPS somewhere too.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2024 12:03:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42125309</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42125309</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42125309</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yep, sorry!<p>It is Binary Ninja</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2024 12:01:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42125298</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42125298</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42125298</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Binary Ninja: <a href="https://binary.ninja/" rel="nofollow">https://binary.ninja/</a> :)<p>Think someone has already linked it below!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2024 12:00:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42125288</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42125288</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42125288</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>5GHz has quite low penetrating power, so for the most part our issue was 2.4GHz.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2024 10:38:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42124852</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42124852</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42124852</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Probably would work, however I suspect the changes would not be as sticky.<p>Apple has some slightly more complex checks that they have used in the past to georestrict stuff like ECG, by using MCC/MNC codes from your mobile network. I suspect that the alt stores would be region locked and stop working outside the EU—but that remains to be tested, and seems like a fun thing to experiment with.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2024 10:36:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42124838</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42124838</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42124838</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's all too early to tell, but we'll know after a week or so. The battery life thing is not seeming like a big problem, since the existing device needs batteries changed every few days or charged every night.<p>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.<p>Thanks for the kind words!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2024 10:33:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42124827</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42124827</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42124827</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thank you for reading and the kind words! We're almost looking forward to this loophole being shut down to really make things a tad bit more challenging haha<p>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.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Nov 2024 22:08:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42120309</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42120309</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42120309</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>haha, I think I've got many miles to go before I'm qualified to answer this :')<p>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!<p>> what earphones do you use — or want to get?
I'm very happy with my Shure Aonic 3s, a very loyal IEMs guy!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Nov 2024 21:58:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42120206</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42120206</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42120206</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We built it ourselves actually!<p>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!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Nov 2024 21:53:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42120143</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42120143</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42120143</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hey! I'm Rithwik, one of the authors of the article, happy to answer questions etc!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Nov 2024 21:03:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42119697</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42119697</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42119697</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Bypassing regulatory locks, hacking AirPods and Faraday cages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Heya! One of the authors here.<p>Nope, its a one time thing. When the feature is enabled, a flag is set on the iCloud account, so you can travel anywhere and have it work. At the same time, a EQ profile is pushed to the transparency mode of the Airpods, enabling the hearing aid features.<p>Once done, it sticks with the Airpods, unless you reset them.<p>However, an interesting quirk is that if you enable this on someone's airpods, and _their_ device/account does not have it 'available', they wont be able to tweak the settings on their device.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Nov 2024 21:01:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42119678</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42119678</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42119678</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by thel3l in "Rabbit R1 reverse engineered to run on Android"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hey there, author here!<p>Unfortunately, we're not able to share all the details until the issues are patched and can't share the APK because (legal reasons)<p>That said, I've already seen it widely in circulation though, especially on X.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 04 May 2024 18:49:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40259506</link><dc:creator>thel3l</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40259506</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40259506</guid></item></channel></rss>