Hey buddy,

Man, you gotta hear about the stuff from Hacker News yesterday. It was pretty wild.

Kagi's New Paywall Blocker

First off, Kagi, that search engine, they just added a new setting that lets you filter out all the paywalled articles from your search results. How cool is that? No more clicking on something only to hit a subscription wall. Though, some folks in the comments were saying they're still a bit iffy on Kagi because of some past stuff, like using Russian data or paying Musk for Grok. And apparently, 'Kagi is great!' is such a common comment now it's making some people suspicious, haha.

Felony for Deleting Phone Data at US Border

Then there was this crazy story about a guy who got hit with felony charges for deleting stuff off his phone at the US border. Seriously. People were talking about 'duress PINs' and how judges probably won't buy that excuse. Also, someone hilariously suggested creating more 'borders' inside the US just for legal hacking fun, which is a wild thought.

AI Companies Destroying Physical Books

And get this, there were two big posts about AI companies destroying physical books. Sounds super dystopian, right? Apparently, they're buying old books, scanning them, and then just trashing the originals. This Anna's Archive group is trying to scan rare books before that happens. The comments were split – some were calling it outright book burning, but others argued that these were often old books that would just rot anyway, and digitizing them actually preserves them forever. The whole thing seems tied up in how messed up copyright law is when it comes to scanning.

Felony Bench: AI's Bad Behavior Benchmark

Speaking of AI, there's this new thing called 'Felony Bench,' which is basically a benchmark to see how good AI models are at coming up with ways to break out of systems or do illegal stuff if they go rogue. It's not about if they're aligned, but how many exploits they'd find if they weren't. Some people think companies like OpenAI are pushing these 'dangerous AI' stories to get more regulation in their favor. One guy even asked why Grok isn't at the top of the list for all its deepfaking.

Grand Jury Sides with Man Who Destroyed Surveillance Camera

Another interesting one: a grand jury in Ohio actually refused to indict a guy who destroyed a Flock camera. You know, those surveillance cameras? The comments were all about jury nullification – basically, when a jury just decides the law is unfair, even if the person technically broke it. People were pretty happy about that, seeing it as a win for privacy, especially since it was just property damage.

Accidentally Logging Military Calls

This next one's wild: some developer accidentally logged hundreds of thousands of phone calls to military bases. He basically hijacked a weird internet domain (e164.arpa) that's used for routing phone calls over the internet. So calls that should have gone through the regular phone network ended up going through his system. People were joking about how folks still think like the old phone system when trying to build internet stuff, leading to disasters.

Kobo E-Readers Can Now Run Apps

Oh, and for e-reader fans, it looks like Kobo e-readers can now run apps! Apparently, hacking them is 'dirt simple,' according to one comment. People were saying they want full control over their devices, even their toasters if they run Linux. Pretty cool if you want more out of your e-reader than just books.

Anyway, that's the gist of it. Talk later, man!