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Show HN: DIY solution to enable hotspot, when your eSIM does not support it

20 points| tejasmanohar | 1 year ago |blog.cyrusroshan.com

5 comments

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timvdalen|1 year ago

> I wondered: why can't I use my phone's LTE data to hotspot?

I heard of this 10 years ago, but is this still the case in the US? You can't just hotspot? I thought iOS and Mac devices did this automatically when they were near each other.

leejoramo|1 year ago

At least for me on AT&T, using my phone as hotspot is part of my service plan with the carrier. Given that I pay for it, it works as you describe.

The hacks described here are if you don’t have hotspot usage enabled with the carrier.

dTal|1 year ago

So, regarding the title: "support" is used euphemistically here to mean "permit" (an editorialization not present in the article). This euphemism is usually used by companies who want to de-emphasize their exertion of control over you - Apple is particularly fond of it (as when they say they do not "support" downgrading iOS - there is no technical restriction, they just don't want you to). Here, though, it seems to be to de-emphasize the "rule breaking" nature of this hack - the original title is far more blunt: "Bypassing hotspot limits on iOS".

It is interesting that this hack is entirely about defeating a conspiracy between Apple and a network operator to control what goes on beyond the netop's endpoint, and it does this - barely - by exploiting the fact that an iOS device is still a general purpose computer despite Apple's best efforts:

> After an hour or two of constantly running sshd on iSH, your phone gets warm and toasty. This is because iSH emulates all of its commands—-but for good reason, App Store approval!

This is not a good reason.