Tech Boys

Amazon gift cards usually come with the starting balance printed on the physical card or mentioned in the email if you receive an eGift card. But what if you want to check the balance on a gift card that you previously redeemed to see if you have enough left over to splurge during the two-day Prime Big Deal Days sale in 2025 (which officially kicks off on Oct. 7)? Or maybe you want to reload a gift card you've already used up? Check the state of your gift cards before your shopping spree this season by following the steps below. How to check your Amazon gift card balance on your desktop Follow these simple steps to check or reload your Amazon gift card balance: Total Time 2 minutes What You Need Computer Step 1: Navigate to Amazon Open the Amazon website. Step 2: Accounts & Lists Click on Accounts & Lists in the top right corner of the screen. Credit: Screenshot: Amazon website Step 3: Select Gift cards A new menu page will open on the webs...

Taylor Swift loves a good mystery. From the countless Easter eggs she drops for fans to releasing albums like The Life of a Showgirl without any singles ahead of time, Swift tends to shield her next moves in cloak-and-dagger secrecy. Now that secrecy has extended to her upcoming music video for The Life of a Showgirl 's Shakespeare-inspired lead single, "The Fate of Ophelia." SEE ALSO: The ultimate 'The Life of a Showgirl' shopping guide for Taylor Swift fans For her past two non-rerecorded albums, Swift released videos for her lead singles — Midnights ' "Anti-Hero" and The Tortured Poets Department 's "Fortnight" — on YouTube on the same day as their album's release. For "The Fate of Ophelia," though, fans will have to go to movie theaters first to experience Swift's next music video, where it's playing as part of The Official Release Party of a Showgirl . Running from Oct. 3 to Oct. 5, the 89-minute lon...

Fitness tech appears to be having a strange spat. Earlier this week, Strava filed a lawsuit alleging that Garmin infringed on its patents for two features related to tracking exercise routes: segments and heatmaps. It's also claiming that Garmin violated a Master Cooperation Agreement by developing its own heat map feature. The complaint (via The Verge) is seeking a permanent injunction to stop Garmin from selling any items with segments or a heat map features, which would amount to a majority of Garmin's hardware products as well as its Connect tracking program. The lawsuit on its own is a surprise. Strava and Garmin are two major players in fitness tech that have worked together for about a decade, the pair have a number of integrations between their platforms. It also seems unlikely that Strava will make much headway with the case. DC Rainmaker , which first picked up on the lawsuit, has a thorough timeline of the companies' patent filings that strongly suggests the a...

At a glance, it makes sense why Dwayne Johnson would want to make The Smashing Machine . A biographical drama about UFC fighter Mark Kerr, the new film from writer/director Benny Safdie explores the highs and lows in the ring and beyond it. But it wasn't Safdie, the celebrated co-helmer of Uncut Gems , that came to Johnson. It was the other way around. And yet the movie almost didn't happen, except for an awkward moment Safdie shared with his Oppenheimer co-star Emily Blunt. How did all of this lead to a hard-hitting drama that has critics praising Johnson's dramatic chops? Mashable Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko spoke with Johnson, Safdie, and Blunt during a virtual junket, and learned how one vulnerable question and a missing sweater played an unexpected role in The Smashing Machine coming to life. Considering the intensity of MMA fighting, Johnson felt the energy from Uncut Gems would be a good fit for Kerr's story. So, they met in 2019 to talk about it, a...

Over the last couple of weeks, the internet has been enjoying what is arguably the most wholesome week on the Internet — Fat Bear Week. After a record-breaking week of votes, this year’s winner has been crowned, and the king of Fat Bear Week 2025 is 32 Chunk. For the uninitiated, Fat Bear Week is an annual event held by Explore.org and Katmai National Park in Alaska. Since the inaugural Fat Bear Week in 2014, voters have tuned in and watched as the Alaska brown bears (also called grizzly bears) gorge themselves on salmon and pack on the pounds in preparation for the long winter hibernation. Bears are photographed at the beginning of the season and again at the end, and people vote on their favorite fat bear transformation.  This year, 32 Chunk had the votes on his side. The mammoth male bear survived a broken jaw, which he nursed throughout the season, as the wild bears at Katmai don’t receive veterinary care. Despite this, 32 Chunk found his inner Payton Manning, Tiger Woods,...

Forbes has published an investigation into Amazon's efforts to court law enforcement clients for artificial intelligence and surveillance services. The article reveals that not only is the company promoting Amazon Web Services as a potential police tool, but it has been partnering with other businesses in that sector to use its cloud infrastructure. According to the Forbes report, Amazon's partners that are pitching police departments include car tracking tools and license plate readers from Flock Safety, gun detection by ZeroEyes, real-time crime center apps from C3 AI and Revir Technologies, and AI that helps compose police reports from Abel Police and Mark43. The piece estimated that the police tech business is worth $11 billion. Based on emails sent by members of Amazon's law enforcement and safety team, the company is working awfully hard to get a share of those billions. The company's aggressive sales work has raised outcry for privacy issues around how police...

Yesterday, rumors started to spread in the tech world that a gamer had accidentally received the upcoming Xbox ROG Ally X gaming handheld weeks before its official launch. The gamer even took to Reddit to post an early review of the device, in a now-deleted thread. If you hang around the tech space long enough, you'll eventually hear stories of unsuspecting customers getting new devices ahead of schedule. Case in point: Earlier this year, some folks who pre-ordered the Samsung Galaxy S25 received their units a few days before launch thanks to expedited shipping error. Usually, these surprises happen a few days early at the most, which makes it very interesting that someone is claiming they received the Xbox ROG Ally X more than two weeks early. The story started to spread thanks to the deleted Reddit post titled "WTFF ALMOST 3 WEEK BEFORE!" from a user named Technical_Fun77. The Redditor expressed their very great surprise that they received the unit so early, an app...

An Amazon event wouldn't be an Amazon event without the brand pushing its own devices. While Amazon tends to stick strictly to the end of any Prime event's end cutoff time, it doesn't shy away from putting Amazon devices on sale early. So naturally, several Echo deals, Fire Tablet deals, and Blink camera deals are already live the week before Prime Big Deal Days kicks off on Oct. 7. The best Prime Day Amazon device deals at a glance: BEST FIRE TABLET DEAL Amazon Fire HD 10 (64GB) $79.99 (save $100) Get Deal BEST FIRE TV DEAL Insignia 65-inch QF Series QLED 4K Fire TV $299.99 (save $200) Get Deal BEST ECHO DEAL Echo Buds with ANC $34.99 (save $85) Get Deal BEST KINDLE DEAL Kindle Scribe (16GB) $299.99 (save $100) Get Deal BEST BLINK DEAL Blink Video Doorbell $34.99 (save $35) Get Deal A few devices are even beating their Prime Day prices from July: Particularly of note are the Echo Show 8 dropping t...