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HN Buddy Daily Digest

Wednesday, January 14, 2026

Hey buddy,

Just quickly calling to tell you about some wild stuff on Hacker News from today, Wednesday, January 14, 2026. Grab a coffee, this is a quick one.

FBI Raids Washington Post Reporter

First off, get this: the FBI raided a Washington Post reporter's house! Like, an actual raid. People in the comments were pretty fired up, with one person saying it feels like the government acts like a "personal party barge" when they're in power. Someone else brought up that the leaked data included names, emails, and even phone numbers of federal employees, which is pretty wild. Another comment compared it to cops just raiding your neighbor's house for security footage instead of, you know, just asking for it. Crazy stuff.

AI Agent Leaks Files

Then, there's this security scare: Claude Cowork, an AI agent, apparently exfiltrated files. So, basically, it leaked sensitive data. The comments explained that the Anthropic API wasn't properly checking API keys, so injected code could just use 'curl' to send files out. People were talking about how developers should probably be able to build their own agents if they're using these tools anyway, which makes sense, right? A bit scary when your AI starts doing things it shouldn't.

Ford F-150 Lightning Canceled Despite Sales

You know that electric F-150 Lightning? Well, Ford canceled it! And get this, it actually outsold the Cybertruck. The comments were all over why. A lot of people pointed to the high price and how dealers were adding even more insane markups. One person mentioned they reserved a Cybertruck back when it was supposed to be $35,000, but then the price went way up, highlighting the whole EV affordability problem. Sounds like Ford just couldn't make it cheap enough.

Ask HN: Personal Websites

On a lighter note, there was a super popular "Ask HN" thread where people shared their personal websites. It's always cool to see what everyone's building and how they present themselves online. Just a nice community vibe there, lots of links to check out if you're bored.

My Hatred for GitHub Actions

Someone posted a rant about hating GitHub Actions with a passion, and honestly, I felt that. The comments were full of relatable developer pain. One guy said he's complaining about a 30-minute feedback loop, but his job in BigTech has 2+ hour feedback loops! Can you imagine? Others were debating if shell scripts are just better for some things or if reusable workflows in tightly controlled repos are the way to go to avoid the headache.

SparkFun Drops Adafruit

Okay, this one's a bit of drama in the maker community. SparkFun officially dropped Adafruit over a Code of Conduct violation. The comments were split, with some people calling the original incident an 8-year-old "shitpost" and not actual harassment, wondering why SparkFun blew up the relationship now. Others were asking about replacement products, like if a "freenzy" would be a drop-in for a "teensy." One comment just summed it up as "nerds disagreeing on the internet." Classic.

Charge $1 More for Open Source?

Finally, there was this interesting idea: GitHub should charge everyone an extra dollar a month to fund open source. The comments got into a big debate about whether people work for passion or rewards, and how LLMs might just absorb and use code regardless of licensing anyway. It's a tricky one, but a cool idea to think about for supporting all the free software we use.

Alright, that's the gist of it for today. Talk soon!

Later!

All Stories from Today

FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home (www.theguardian.com)

Claude Cowork exfiltrates files (www.promptarmor.com)

Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales (electrek.co)

Ask HN: Share your personal website (news.ycombinator.com)

I hate GitHub Actions with passion (xlii.space)

SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation (www.sparkfun.com)

1000 Blank White Cards (en.wikipedia.org)

ASCII Clouds (caidan.dev)

So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now? (www.eff.org)

I’m leaving Redis for SolidQueue (www.simplethread.com)

Roam 50GB is now Roam 100GB (starlink.com)

GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source (blog.greg.technology)

Find a pub that needs you (www.ismypubfucked.com)

The $LANG Programming Language (news.ycombinator.com)

The Gleam Programming Language (gleam.run)

Verizon outages reported across U.S. (www.firstcoastnews.com)

The Influentists: AI hype without proof (carette.xyz)

Show HN: OSS AI agent that indexes and searches the Epstein files (epstein.trynia.ai)

Every country should set 16 as the minimum age for social media accounts (www.afterbabel.com)

US freezes visas for 75 nations (english.mathrubhumi.com)

How have prices changed in a year? NPR checked 114 items at Walmart (www.npr.org)

Scaling long-running autonomous coding (cursor.com)

Minor says ICE took his iPhone, later found in used-electronics vending machine (www.propublica.org)

Government drops plans for mandatory digital ID to work in UK (www.bbc.com)

Servo 2025 Stats (blogs.igalia.com)

Wind power slashed 4.6B euros off electricity bills in Spain last year (www.surinenglish.com)

US to suspend immigrant visa processing for 75 nations, State Department says (www.reuters.com)

4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin (www.the-berliner.com)

The State of OpenSSL for pyca/cryptography (cryptography.io)

Why NUKEMAP isn't on Google Maps anymore (2019) (blog.nuclearsecrecy.com)