My friend, Raj Vedam, told me about Madhava of Sangamagrama.

The Kerala school was well known in the 15th and 16th centuries, in the period of the first contact with European navigators in the Malabar Coast. At the time, the port of Muziris, near Sangamagrama, was a major center for maritime trade, and a number of Jesuit missionaries and traders were active in this region. Given the fame of the Kerala school, and the interest shown by some of the Jesuit groups during this period in local scholarship, some scholars, including G. Joseph of the U. Manchester have suggested[26] that the writings of the Kerala school may have also been transmitted to Europe around this time, which was still about a century before Newton.

All this time I thought Richard Newton^* (oops, I mean Sir Isaac Newton) was the foundation of my career in high tech. I was first introduced to Newton’s method for solving non-linear equations in a college freshman seminar on computers. I could never have imagined that the introduction to that mathematical technique would be the foundation of a good part of my career in software engineering.

^*Richard Newton was a professor at the University of California in Berkeley who did have a significant influence on my career.

The Intercept has the story Russia Hysteria Infects WashPost Again: False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid.

Even worse, there is zero evidence that Russian hackers were even responsible for the implanting of this malware on this single laptop. The fact that malware is “Russian-made” does not mean that only Russians can use it; indeed, like a lot of malware, it can be purchased (as Jeffrey Carr has pointed out in the DNC hacking context, assuming that Russian-made malware must have been used by Russians is as irrational as finding a Russian-made Kalishnikov AKM rifle at a crime scene and assuming the killer must be Russian).

Even this story does not get it completely right. The software is not Russian made, although they did put that in quotes. See my previous post US Govt Data Shows “Russia” Used Outdated Ukrainian PHP Malware.

You don’t even have to buy the software. You can make a voluntary donation to the author if you want to.