The Daily Index — Monday, September 15, 2025 · TLDR Index

PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

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UTF-8 IS A BRILLIANT DESIGN

UTF-8 was designed to represent millions of characters from different languages and scripts and still be backward compatible with ASCII. Every ASCII-encoded file is a valid UTF-8 file, and every UTF-8 encoded file that only has ASCII characters is a valid ASCII file. This post gets into how UTF-8 works. A link to a playground for visualizing and playing around with UTF-8 encoding is available in the post.

iamvishnu.com · 9 min

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A.I.'S PROPHET OF DOOM WANTS TO SHUT IT ALL DOWN

Eliezer Yudkowsky, the founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a Berkeley-based nonprofit that studies risks from advanced artificial intelligence, believes that building powerful AI systems is a terrible idea that will end in disaster. He recently released a book co-written with MIRI's president aimed at stopping the development of AI. The book claims that everyone on Earth will die if any company or group anywhere on the planet builds an artificial superintelligence using anything remotely like current techniques. While some may see Yudkowsky as an extremist or a crank, he is a central figure in modern AI history, and his influence on the industry is undeniable.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 14 min

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‘MORE EGALITARIAN': HOW NEPAL'S GEN Z USED GAMING APP DISCORD TO PICK PM

14 governments representing three parties have taken turns at governing Nepal since 2008, when the country adopted a new constitution after abolishing its monarchy. After recent protests, the country's citizens used a virtual poll on Discord to elect its new leader. A Gen Z group called Hami Nepal ran a channel where a debate on the country's future was livestreamed. After hours of debate, participants selected former Supreme Court Chief Justice Sushila Karki to lead Nepal.

aljazeera.com · 10 min

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WE GREW FROM ZERO TO $50M ARR IN <2 YEARS, PROFITABLY

This post looks at how influencer marketing, investing in brand before performance marketing, user testing, and dogfooding helped Gamma grow from zero to $50 million ARR in under two years.

threadreaderapp.com · 5 min

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THE CITY LEADING CHINA'S CHARGE TO PULL AHEAD IN AI

Hangzhou, China, has become an AI hub at the center of China's global tech ambitions.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 7 min

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OUR ROBOTS ARE NOW FOLDING LAUNDRY FOR TUMBLE LAUNDRY CUSTOMERS IN SAN FRANCISCO

A short video of a robot from Weave Robotics folding laundry.

threadreaderapp.com · 1 min

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WHY YOU'D ISSUE A BRANDED STABLECOIN LIKE MCDONALDSCOIN

Branded stablecoins entitle platforms to more of the issuer rewards for customer deposits, which consequently lets them pay more rewards to customers who choose to store money with them.

Source unavailable · 5 min

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A WORD ABOUT COMPLEXITY

One of the barriers that prevents people from modifying open source software is complexity.

dillo-browser.github.io · 4 min

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BECOMING THE PERSON WHO DOES THE THING

Our self-identity dictates everything, but it isn't set in stone.

fredrivett.com · 7 min