Daily Tech News 21 December 2026

• Indian certificate authority eMudhra - one of the companies authorised to issue the SSL certificates the entire internet depends on - has been thoroughly compromised. (The Register)
  
  And when I say "compromised" I mean in the sense of caught with its pants down performing a dance to honour the Hindu goddess Kali in the middle of the busiest intersection in central Bangalore during Diwali.
  
  And why I mean that is someone figured out one of the keys they use to sign certificates.
  
  The key was 4.

• Japan, a real country albeit one with strange sandwiches, just launched a catch-and-release expedition to the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos. (Space)
  
  The plan is to return a sample of at least ten grams of Phobosian soil to Earth. The whole moon if they can capture it in the craft's Pokeball, but at least ten grams.
  
  
  
• AMD's much improved FSR 4.1 upscaling has now been backported to everything. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, not this laptop, which is two generations too old for that, but dedicated Radeon 6000 family cards, the Xbox, handhelds using the Z2 chips, and Ryzen Max and Ryzen 9 mini-PCs.
  
  Also not officially to the Ryzen 7 mini-PCs, though they will likely work with a bit of hacking; they just might not benefit much from it.
  
  
  
• How to convert $1000 worth of laptop RAM to $1000 worth of desktop RAM. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Like porcupines making love.
  
  
  
• A Canadian expert in ransomware negotiations who recently wrote a book recommending you should always talk to the people holding you to ransom was allegedly in cahoots with the ransomers. (Krebs on Security)
  
  And is now in FBI custody.
  
  
  
• Sony has updated its classic Walkman music player. (The Register)
  
  The top model costs $5900 and offers 256GB of storage. But that's a luxury item with a price to match; the entry level model with 64GB of storage - still quite a lot for MP3 files - is only $1900.
  
  Wait.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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