`_provider_pip_dependencies` still read ~/.hermes/hindsight/config.json with
strict utf-8 inside a bare `except Exception`, so a Windows-editor BOM made the
`mode` lookup silently fail and `hermes update` reinstalled only
`hindsight-client`, leaving the embedded daemon broken — the exact #70636
symptom this helper exists to prevent. Route it through the shared
`read_json_or_empty` (utf-8-sig, {} on missing/corrupt) like the other memory
readers in this PR, and add the reader to the parametrized BOM invariant.