I read the first book, and like OP found the characters bland and the writing boring. I reckon this is due to the way the original is translated into English. The style may be more appealing to a chinese audience. I guess there are cultural differences that transpire in one’s language and prose.

Unlike OP however, I found the story compelling enough to finish the first book. I struggled a lot more with the second one, until my dog did me a favor and decided to shred it to pieces while I was away =D

I did enjoy the Netflix show though, and I’ll happily watch season 2.

“Constant average query time” is not that hard to understand. It means that sometimes access time is e.g. linear, and sometimes you get your content before executing the code. With a hash table large enough and full enough, this can be used to fetch content seconds, minutes, days, potentially years before the program even exists. That’s one hell of a breakthrough.

[edit] /s, oops

See Overton Window [Wikipedia]. It’s something to keep in mind in the face of extreme discourse (like, say, a Nazi salute on live TV) before dismissing it as irrelevant.

Hovercat in maintenance

Little guy living its 9 lives all at once

Keeping femalehood at bay, now THAT’s masculine af

When you put it like that, it sounds very much like theoretical physics