The Quiet Hum of a Kolkata Night It was past midnight. The client call had stretched, as they often do, discussing some obscure network vulnerability. My window overlooks a narrow lane in Kolkata, usually bustling, but at this hour, it's mostly quiet. Just the distant hum of the city, and sometimes, the faint sound of a temple bell. I'd been thinking, as I often do after these calls, about structure, about foundations, about what holds things up, or more accurately, what allows them to stand gracefully. And my mind drifted, as it often does, to Vastu Shastra. Not the trendy, commercialised versions you see today, but the core principles. The ancient Indian science of architecture and placement. We hear about it in new constructions, people ensuring their kitchens face the right direction, or their beds are aligned just so. But I often wonder about Vastu Shastra, the deeper, almost philosophical truth it carries, particularly for us now. What does it teach about emptiness, abo...
The Quiet Hum of the Server Room, and a New Watchman It was late last night, after a long debugging session with a client's e-commerce site, that I saw the news. SEBI, our market regulator here in India, is setting up a dedicated task force for AI-driven cyber threats. My first thought wasn't about the intricacies of machine learning models or attack vectors. No, it was about the old guard, the human analysts who’ve spent decades hunched over screens, sifting through logs, their eyes trained to spot the smallest anomaly. Will AI cybersecurity make their work easier, or will it fundamentally change what 'security' even means? I remember one time, during a particularly nasty DDoS attack on a small startup I was helping, we were all just watching the traffic, a torrent of malicious requests, trying to find patterns, trying to block IPs fast enough. It felt like standing in a storm, trying to catch raindrops with a thimble. Would an AI have seen it coming? Would it have r...