Yaky

Another one that comes to mind is Red Rising, but just for wasted potential. The premise is that miners on Mars, who are told they are working to establish a new colony, are, in reality,

Fantastic premise, author can lean into the entire labor rights history of the early 20th century, worker strikes, revolutions, etc. Nope, the idea goes out of the window about 1/4 of the book through, and you get a really bad ripoff of Hunger Games.

I remember the Ukrainian search engine/portal from early 2000s as well.

Thanks Google for now also taking the term "Gemini Space" away from geminispace.

Quite ironic that both the tech giant's AI and intentionally-simple internet protocol are both named Gemini.

That's interesting about Gravity's Rainbow.

I had the exact opposite reading Cryptonomicon: it was not bad and sometimes rather interesting to read, but looking back, it was 900 pages of wannabe hackers and WWII dudes, tied together with barely 100 pages worth of plot.

I hate to be that guy, but if FairPhone aims to reduce waste, be modular and repairable, why are there 6 models of them? Are they inter-compatible? What hardware (other than 5G antenna) changed since the first/second one? Even if it did, could it have been replaced (upgraded) on the original model?

Not necessarily a dig at the manufacturers, but I wish collectively we would stop chasing more features / CPU / RAM, stuck with something for a decade, and made existing software more efficient instead.

I use it occasionally, when writing lists with lots of detail, or to separate parts of the sentence where I already used multiple commas.

there are many thought-provoking ideas about conscience, the human brain, and alien life; yet it is wrapped in a mediocre sci-fi action movie script

Finishing the Imperial Radch sci-fi trilogy (Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy) by Ann Leckie. Despite the agender language feature (everyone is addressed as she) the books deal more with colonialism, imperialism, and personal identity, rather than gender. Writing style is very information-dense, lots of thoughts and actions happening simultaneously. Compared to other science fiction that I read, it gets much more into the cultural and interpersonal situations, especially the second book.

Revelation Space series (specifically the "future" part: Revelation Space, Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap) might not have the best writing, but the wild (and sometimes insane) ideas and scale of everything is great.

Late Soviet Union might be a similar to what you are looking for? I wasn't alive back then, but from what I recall from reading old science magazines as a kid, there were few home computers, lots of "radio-hobbyist" stuff (DIY electronics from radio to computers), and praise for "inventor and rationalizer" for the good of the people. On paper at least. I think most interpersonal communication was over the phone or amateur radio, or even telegrams.

I don't know much about how modern China goes about it though.

But TBF it's very difficult to speculate about message encryption. Thinking back from my own experience, digital communication (over the internet or even SMS over cell phone networks) was not common until 90s-2000s, and encrypting them became a concern not too long ago, early 2010s I think? Before that, it was HTTP (without the S) and unencrypted AIM chats over the Jabber protocol.

My friend works for a startup that does exactly that - trains AIs on conversations and responses from a specific person (some business higher-ups) for purposes of "coaching" and "mentoring". I don't know how well it works.

It's a Librem5 phone with cringe name and 100% markup, but it's their own product nonetheless. I.e. it is not a generic Android with a custom skin and preinstalled apps like Trump Phone, Freedom Phone, or Quantum Internet box.

You can buy pretty much the same Librem5 assembled in China for ~$700. Take a look at Liberux Nexx Linux phone too (they are just staring out)

(Not sure what you're calling racist here, appeal to "patriots"?)

Another interesting exploration is in Light of Other Days by Stephen Baxter. New technology allows creating light-passing micro-wormholes at any location (and time!), erasing privacy nearly entirely. At first, tabloids run wild with "shocking" photos of famous people, but eventually the hype dies. There are people who outright do lewd things in public ("anyone can see me at any time anyway"), some go about their life as usual, and some join secret groups who meet in the dark and use touch language for the deaf-blind.