You're listening to Tech Beat, your daily look at the stories shaping our digital world.
Carhartt is the latest major brand to find itself at the center of a serious data breach. The clothing company confirmed that twelve point nine million customer records were leaked onto the dark web after ransom negotiations with the hacking group ShinyHunters broke down. The stolen data, pulled from Databricks infrastructure, includes names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses — a reminder that even companies far outside the tech sector carry enormous digital exposure.
Shifting to the battlefield of public opinion, Nvidia's DLSS five technology appears to be staging a comeback. Early reactions were brutal, with gamers loudly dismissing the AI-powered upscaling as, quote, AI slop. But as more footage circulates, some of those same critics are reversing course, calling it an insanely huge graphical update. It's a familiar arc — skepticism giving way to cautious acceptance once people actually see the results.
And in defense technology, a San Francisco startup called Mara has raised seven million dollars to develop a backpack-portable drone interceptor system. Their device, called Spike, weighs just eight point eight ounces and is designed to cost roughly the same as the cheap commercial drones it destroys — giving soldiers a one-for-one economic answer to a growing asymmetric threat.
Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
