Variety is the spice of life

This year has been pretty good on the reading space with few really good books that I had a chance to read, courtesy Brags and other nalla ullams who share their loot. Keigo Higashino tops my list of thriller genre authors and have almost read all his translated books. Was super impressed with “Devotion of suspect X” and “Malice” and Peter Swanson conquers all with his masterly depiction of suspense genre. “Her every fear” still resonates with its effect even while reading the review and would await his next realase in 2018 with bated breath. The year was quite good on the movie front as well with quite lot of interesting movies in tamil. 2017 started off with Jallikattu protests, which tuned all of TN in same frequency, with the emotional outpour flooding the sands of Marina. I had firsthand witness to some really senti scenes on MRTS stations that would put any mass scene on movies to shame, even without the BGM. Politically, it was a watershed year for TN with so much of chaos and...

Maayavan – Sci-Fi movies in tamil is a rarity and that too one with good script/screenplay is even more of a rare case. A sci-fi movie in tamil with a good script/screenplay and solid performances is probably the rarest of rare cases. The last such movie was “Indru netru naalai” which was impressive right from the title. “Maayavan” is from the stables of the same house with the story department helmed by the producer himself. C.V Kumar and Thirukumaran entertainment have become synonymous with good movies with excellent storyline. He doesn’t disappoint in his maiden venture as a director as well. The storyline is pretty original (with no Korean/foreign movie yet to be identified from where it was lifted) with a police official investigating a series of murders following similar pattern. Right from the opening scene the story picks up tempo and it continues till the end with no lag anywhere. There are lot of activities happening within the first fifteen minutes of the movie that are nea...

This would probably the last book in the Keigo Higashino I may get to read this year. Another intriguing tale of murder investigation where the suspense around “Who” and more importantly the “how” gets prolonged almost till the last chapter, unlike his other novels where it’s mostly open book case of who is the killer with only the investigation procedure taking everyone on a thrill rider. Here again, the police investigation and the detailing around it makes it a compelling read. There is a death pretty much at the very beginning of the novel with more than sufficient hint as to who is going to kill the victim and even on the “how” part. But as the investigation progresses, there are so many view points and details that crop up which makes one wonder where the initial apprehensions as simple as they seemed. Whatever could be the point of view of the reader, there is a character that voices out and thinks on the same line and thereby the author makes a big win. There are immediate co...

Aruvi – Ever since release, there has been so many reviews and feedbacks and appreciations and accolades around this movie that, it was really surprising to see such an unanimously positive comment. And surprisingly, not a single one of the review carried any link about the story and the comments were also an exact replica of each other. Felt as if, someone typed a review and circulated it to all newspapers and social media to “touch upon” and circulate. Every single one of them had praised on the finer aspect of the casting, be it the heroine, the soothing bgm or the wonderful supporting cast. The words were a repeat across all media. Usually, such kind of reviews are reserved for Karan johar, SRK movies, which are often “sponsored” content. But for this movie, everyone went out of their way to promote word of mouth publicity. When I saw the movie, I felt, all those adulation were more out of guilt rather than anything else. Guilt that as a society we have failed to take care of the...

Post dedicated to Thala Ramesh 😎 The only superhero I knew for a really longtime during my childhood was Superman. The bulging biceps, well-oiled mop of black hair, billowing red cape and shiny blue body suit were irresistibly matched with x-ray vision, heat rays and above all his ability to fly, made the comic hero a real superhero. When the cartoon series used to play on and off on DD, the starting of the series would have a mini-intro about Superman, like how the man of steel, came from Krypton as a child, his ability to outrun a train or be faster than a bullet. The most famous tagline/catch phrase of all being, “it’s a bird.. it’s a plane..its SUPERMAN”. Unfortunately I never had a chance to watch the toon series for long for it was discontinued. When I chanced upon the drama series, “Supergirl” I was in two minds before I started watching the series. If at all there could be an antithesis of Superman, the ultimate macho superhero, that would be “Supergirl”, with the name itsel...

This is the fourth book on my Keigo Higashino series. Easily the longest of the four and setting wise quite different from any of the other three. I felt, “Devotion of Suspect X”, probably had the best translator and wish the same person had done the other three as well. The strain of translation is visible at places in this book though not as worse as “Name of the game is a kidnapping”, which was worse right from its title or “Malice”, which had its fair share of mistakes. The other aspect that was notably different in this book was the sheer number of characters. There is an army of them and trying to follow who does what is a tedious task in itself. In almost all the book, there is a leading lady character who is a hostess. Now that I think of, that’s the only profession they belong to on all the four books!! And a teacher character is a repeat across most of them. Probably the author has his own favorite of professions I guess. Story wise, it’s one of the most detailed and circui...

The concept of public and private in the context of Block chains is less to do with sharing but more to do with who can authenticate a transaction or not. In a public Block chain – like bitcoin –every node can authenticate a transaction. But in the case of permissioned ledger or private Block chain, you select a certain number of entities who have preferential rights to authenticate that transaction. So when we come to access, that’s where we come to the privacy bit. So what does this do in terms of security and in terms of confidentiality? On the security front – the database is replicated across different nodes and each can view the transaction – as a result, any change which is made to the database all the nodes in a system have to verify that and authenticate that change. Even in a private Block chain, for example in a supply chain, confidentiality is an issue. Not everything in a supply chain transaction is meant to be viewed by all the actors and you need to restrict access. ...

The private equity market, while attractive to investors and businesses, has seen little technological investment or innovation in recent years. However, as calls for greater transparency, efficiency and security are made - especially in a world where cyber-attacks are a common occurrence - private equity funds and services need to address the lack. To tackle the problem, IBM and Northern Trust have turned towards the Block chain. To take the hassle out of regulatory and legal compliance, the technology has also been designed to support current rules and was created by working with government officials and regulators during the process. Ownership stakes can be transferred and managed through the ledger, and the companies say the service offers "one version of the truth" to users on the platform. Current legal and administrative processes that support private equity are time consuming and expensive and a lack of transparency and efficient market practices almost always leads...

In a system like Block chains, where all the parties involved are know all the information for a transaction, is it even possible to have privacy?  If so, what kind of data should be left out of the system? But first, it is important to distinguish a distributed database and a decentralized ledger system. A distributed database could very well be where there is a central authority which holds the data and multiple copies of that data is there for others to view it. A classic example of that could be a central government database – say with the taxman, the RBI and others in a governance framework. But that really is not Block chain. In a situation where different actors do not trust each other, what you do normally is that you would set up an intermediary that you all trust. The good example being currency - One wouldn't know if the currency they have has any value, therefore, the RBI authenticates or certifies that it has value.’ That is the centralized intermediary concept. In ...