Hacker News: ashtavakra

New comment by ashtavakra in "Show HN: Ithihāsas – a character explorer for Hindu epics, built in a few hours"

ashtavakra — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:17:37 +0000

Good attempt. What were the sources for these graphs? Orginals? Valmiki Ramayanam and Vyasa Mahabharata? Looking at Mahabharata's relationship graph on the website - it feels like it is incomplete. There are probably ~400 to 500 active named characters in Mahabharata (among several thousands of named characters overall)

New comment by ashtavakra in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"

ashtavakra — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:22:01 +0000

I am building localgcp - This is localstack / floci equivalent for Google Cloud platform : https://github.com/slokam-ai/localgcp - currently supports 14 services, including Vertex AI and BigQuery.

Part of building this, I decided to build a BigQuery emulator from scratch and learned a lot about GoogleSQL (previously ZetaSQL) along the way: https://github.com/slokam-ai/localbq

I plan to maintain and improve this going forward. The goal is to see how much can emulators actually do.

Website: https://localgcp.com/

New comment by ashtavakra in "Ask HN: What fiction books would you recommend for programmers?"

ashtavakra — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 14:09:47 +0000

I consolidated the comments for my reference later. Someone else might also find it useful:

# Fiction Books Recommended for Programmers (HN Thread 46128404)

## Adrian Tchaikovsky - *Children of Time* — Science Fiction (Evolution, Space Opera) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim...

## Rick Cook — Wizardry Series - *Wizard’s Bane* — Fantasy, Programming/Magic Mashup https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112616.Wizard_s_Bane - *Wizardry Series (overview)* https://www.goodreads.com/series/43084-wiz

## James P. Hogan - *Inherit the Stars* — Hard Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/743568.Inherit_the_Stars - *Code of the Lifemaker* — Sci-Fi, Artificial Life https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296722.Code_of_the_Lifem... - *The Two Faces of Tomorrow* — AI, Hard Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218017.The_Two_Faces_of_...

## D. F. Jones — Colossus Trilogy - *Colossus* — AI, Classic Sci-Fi Thriller https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/806105.Colossus - *The Fall of Colossus* — AI, Sci-Fi https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/806106.The_Fall_of_Colos... - *Colossus and the Crab* — AI, Sci-Fi https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/806107.Colossus_and_the_...

## Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner) - *A Logic Named Joe* — Golden-Age Sci-Fi, AI Precursor https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16179042-a-logic-named-j...

## David Gerrold - *When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One* — AI, Classic Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/865672.When_H_A_R_L_I_E_...

## William Gibson / Bruce Sterling - *Neuromancer* — Cyberpunk https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6088007-neuromancer - *The Difference Engine* — Steampunk https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16781.The_Difference_Eng...

## Neal Stephenson - *Snow Crash* — Cyberpunk https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/830.Snow_Crash - *Cryptonomicon* — Techno-thriller, Cyber-history https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/816.Cryptonomicon - *Anathem* — Philosophical Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2845024-anathem - *The Diamond Age* — Nanopunk https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/827.The_Diamond_Age

## Fred Saberhagen - *Octagon* — AI, Techno-thriller https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1891958.Octagon

## Lois McMaster Bujold — Vorkosigan Saga - *Series Overview* — Space Opera https://www.goodreads.com/series/40946-vorkosigan-saga

## Richard Powers - *Galatea 2.2* — Literary Fiction, AI https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45104.Galatea_2_2

## Scott Meyer - *Off to Be the Wizard* — Comic Fantasy with Computing Themes https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18616975-off-to-be-the-w...

## Daniel Suarez - *Daemon* — Cyber-thriller, AI https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665844-daemon

## Thomas J. Ryan - *The Adolescence of P-1* — AI, Classic Sci-Fi https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218059.The_Adolescence_o...

## Ernest Cline - *Ready Player One* — Sci-Fi, Gaming, Pop-Culture Adventure https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9969571-ready-player-one

## Dennis E. Taylor - *We Are Legion (We Are Bob)* — Humorous Sci-Fi, AI, Space Opera https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29475817-we-are-legion-w...

## Ted Chiang - *Stories of Your Life and Others* — Speculative Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_L... - *Exhalation* — Speculative Fiction, Philosophy, AI https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41160292-exhalation - *The Lifecycle of Software Objects* — AI, Digital Consciousness https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9166173-the-lifecycle-of...

## Charles Stross - *Laundry Files Series* — Math-based Magic, Techno-Fantasy https://www.goodreads.com/series/50764-laundry-files

## Ken Liu - *The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories* — Speculative Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11289614-the-paper-menag... - *The Hidden Girl and Other Stories* — Speculative Fiction, AI, VR https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51008178-the-hidden-girl...

## Ellen Ullman - *The Bug* — Tech Industry Literary Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703.The_Bug

## Cory Doctorow - *Radicalized* — Techno-sociopolitical Speculative Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40604122-radicalized

## qntm (Sam Hughes) - *Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories* — Speculative Fiction, Computing Themes https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56516939-valuable-humans...

## Roger Williams - *The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect* — AI, Post-Singularity SF https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/258140.The_Metamorphosis...

## Greg Bear - *Eon* — Hard Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/924843.Eon

## Vernor Vinge - *A Deepness in the Sky* — Hard Sci-Fi, Space Opera https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175303.A_Deepness_in_the...

## Terry Pratchett - *Going Postal* — Comic Fantasy, Satire of Bureaucracy & Tech https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64222.Going_Postal

## Bruce Bethke - *Headcrash* — Cyber-satire https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213465.Headcrash

## Mary Shelley - *Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus* — Classic Gothic Sci-Fi https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35031085-frankenstein

## Douglas Adams - *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy* — Comic Sci-Fi https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11.The_Hitchhiker_s_Guid...

## Jorge Luis Borges - *The Library of Babel* — Metaphysical Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7844213-the-library-of-b...

## Greg Egan - *Permutation City* — Simulation Theory, Hard Sci-Fi https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156784.Permutation_City

## Cixin Liu - *The Three-Body Problem* — Hard Sci-Fi, First Contact https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20518872-the-three-body-...

Show HN: Selecta – Natural language analytics for BigQuery

ashtavakra — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 12:04:05 +0000

I built Selecta, a tool that lets you ask questions about your data in BigQuery using natural language. It's powered by Google's ADK on the backend and a Next.js frontend. It provides structured answers with summaries, results, and business insights, and even generates charts. The source code is available on GitHub.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45667786

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by ashtavakra in "Ravana – Multi AI Assistant Browser Desktop App"

ashtavakra — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 12:39:36 +0000

Ravana is a cross-platform desktop application built with Electron that allows you to use multiple AI assistants like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude in a single, organized, tabbed interface. It currently supports Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, NotebookLM, Meta AI, and Perplexity.

Show HN: Ravana, Multi AI Assistant Browser Desktop App

ashtavakra — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 12:39:36 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/yogirk/ravana

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44422536

Points: 19

# Comments: 1

New comment by ashtavakra in "Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?"

ashtavakra — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 07:51:39 +0000

A Gemini summary of this thread: https://g.co/gemini/share/a661b47cc0f3

New comment by ashtavakra in "Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform"

ashtavakra — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 12:35:56 +0000

Ah nice to know :)

I was able to edit the URL, thanks!

New comment by ashtavakra in "Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform"

ashtavakra — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 12:01:35 +0000

Awesome. Clean and minimal.

I tried to write a post in Telugu language and it resulted in rather long and ugly URL. https://nicheless.blog/post/%E0%B0%B9%E0%B0%82%E0%B0%AA%E0%B...

PostgreSQL CDC to BigQuery Using GCP Datastream

ashtavakra — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 15:05:53 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.thecloudside.com/replicate-rds-postgresql-to-bigquery-using-datastream-cdc-99319375aa87

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32926193

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

PosgreSQL RDS CDC to BigQuery Using AirByte

ashtavakra — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 07:58:42 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.thecloudside.com/replicate-rds-postgresql-to-bigquery-using-airbyte-cdc-9be9f294e71a

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32383283

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

WordPress attacks and Cloud Armor protection on GCP – True story

ashtavakra — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 18:07:20 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.thecloudside.com/wordpress-attacks-cloud-armor-protection-on-gcp-true-story-59ba25ffb7f8?gi=6923e35d97a2

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30166558

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Deploying Kafka cluster with Zookeeper on GCP – the hard way!

ashtavakra — Sun, 02 Jan 2022 16:50:11 +0000

Article URL: https://gist.github.com/rk-cloudside/4333d8e5a8de29297c21c7dde0dded24

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29770331

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Ask HN: Is there a Techmeme dataset available? (https://www.techmeme.com/)

ashtavakra — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 14:41:09 +0000

It would be interesting to load this dataset to something like BigQuery and take a look at what was hot in startup / tech ecosystem at given point in time. Example, Occurrences of news related to startups based out of Bengaluru, over a period of time etc.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29566525

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

Monitoring Raspberry Pi Devices Using Telegraf, InfluxDB and Grafana

ashtavakra — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 17:04:34 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.thecloudside.com/raspberry-pi-monitoring-using-telegraf-influxdb-and-grafana-defb63127fe3

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28317553

Points: 73

# Comments: 28

Deep Neural Network Implemented in Pure SQL Over BigQuery

ashtavakra — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:55:23 +0000

Article URL: https://towardsdatascience.com/deep-neural-network-implemented-in-pure-sql-over-bigquery-f3ed245814d3

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576593

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Stack Overflow Bot: Ask Questions from Visual Studio Code

ashtavakra — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 13:22:15 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/Microsoft/BotFramework-Samples/tree/master/StackOverflow-Bot

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15383576

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Ask HN: Can ML/AI make system monitoring better?

ashtavakra — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:51:33 +0000

If someone with enough experience in ML/AI were to build an application that aims to 1) Reduce the overall number of alerts 2) Figure out which alerts are actionable and which are not 3) Predict potential issues and suggest remedies - would he/she succeed? The question is to find whether someone can actually achieve this with ML/AI in its current state today. If something like this was possible is it safe to assume that engineering teams at Google, Amazon, Uber, AirBnB, DropBox, NetFlix would have already implemented this?

I read about two different views on this subject today

1. Why Machine Learning in Monitoring is BS: https://blog.opsee.com/machine-learning-in-monitoring-is-bs-134e362faee2

2. Why it is not BS: http://mabrek.github.io/blog/machine-learning-is-not-bs/

I was curious to find what good people on HN think about this.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15219957

Points: 7

# Comments: 4

New comment by ashtavakra in "The Day I Played Bill Gates and Satya at Ping-Pong"

ashtavakra — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 08:53:29 +0000

"Leadership is a privilege that can easily be taken away. The talented people who work for me have a plenty of options and can leave at any moment. I therefore treat them like unpaid volunteers"

Interesting perspective.

1.1B New York Taxi Rides on RedShift Spectrum and Athena

ashtavakra — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 13:45:04 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.powerupcloud.com/1-1-billion-new-york-taxi-rides-on-redshift-spectrum-and-athena-1d6cfc89a812

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14487523

Points: 1

# Comments: 0