Hasta La Gadget!

So you’ve got a couple of dead old video game consoles lying around. While you could just throw them in the trash, it’s better for you to recycle them. And what better than to turn your old game systems into Batman’s Tumbler?

That’s exactly what recycling artist Daniel Shankalonian did when he got his hands on a couple of deceased PlayStation 2 systems. He completed his build chopping up the bits and pieces of the consoles, mixing in a liberal dose of printer and hard drive parts, and placing the whole assemblage on a broken down old Dell XPS laptop.

While it’s certainly not as elegant of a job as Lucius Fox did with the original Tumbler, you have to give Shankalonian credit for being able to make lemonade out of the lemons he was dealt. And Lucius had the slight advantage of having millions of dollars from the Wayne Foundation to work with too.

Best of all, you can own this recycled PS2/Batmobile. It’s available over on Etsy for $250(USD). It’s a shame you can’t hook up a DualShock and play Arkham Origins on it.

There are huge number of headphones available on the market today running the gamut from dirt cheap to incredibly expensive. There are headphones aimed at everyone from users who don’t really care what the music sounds like all the way up to audiophiles who will pay huge money to hear every little nuance in their favorite tracks. One thing all of those headphones have in common is that the speaker drivers use moving parts.

A group of researchers have created a new type of headphone that uses a driver with no moving parts, based on carbon nanotubes. The headphones are able to create sound using thermoacoustic effect. That means that sound is created relying on the expansion and contraction of air.

It’s unclear at this point how high the quality of music these carbon nanotube speakers will be able to create. We don’t know if it will be an everyman headset or capable of creating audiophile grade sound.

We also don’t know how much headphones using carbon nanotubes will cost or when they might be available. However, early indications are that headphones using this technology could be reasonably priced, since they could be produced using techniques similar to those used to create computer chips.

[via Chemical and Engineering News via HotHardware]

The man alleged to be "Dread Pirate Roberts," the founder and operator of the Silk Road—an online marketplace where bitcoins were traded for a range of goods and services, including drugs—was arrested by the FBI in San Francisco Wednesday. The criminal complaint, released today, provides many details about how the site and its users relied on widespread anonymity technology, including Tor and Bitcoin.

Read more…

At first glance, Split might look like a pair of handy dandy wireless earphones, but they’re more than that. They’re actually self-contained MP3 players that you can control without a display or buttons.

Greenwing Audio definitely succeeded in making the most compact music players I’ve ever seen. The earbuds are magnetic, which is a handy feature since you’re less likely to lose one of them if they’re stuck together when you’re not using them. Either that, or you lose them both at the same time.

Without a display, how do you control these things? By biting down. Apparently, one bite skips a track while two bites toggles the volume. And no, you don’t need to put them in your mouth. This feature is triggered thanks to a three-axis accelerometer installed in the ear buds.

Split is charged via USB cable, with each charge lasting about four hours. Songs are also transferred to the system via USB. Unfortunately, given its size, storage is limited to 256 MB or roughly 24 songs.

It’s definitely an interesting concept, but I’m thinking this is something you definitely can’t use while you’re eating or if you have a habit of biting down randomly throughout the day. Split is up for funding on Kickstarter through 10/31/13, where a minimum pledge of $155(USD) will get you one pair.

[via Dvice]

If you’re anything like me, you always have your smartphone with you. I always have a fear of losing something in my pocket, especially my car keys, so it drives me crazy to have a lot of things stuffed inside the pockets of my jeans. If you like to go a bit more minimalist and don’t want to have to carry your smartphone and your wallet, OtterBox has a new case that you might appreciate.

The case is called the Commuter Series Wallet and is available for the iPhone 5/5S and the Samsung Galaxy S4. This certainly isn’t the first case on the market to offer wallet capability, but it does look like OtterBox’s offering will hold more than a lot of other cases on the market. OtterBox is also well-known for making cases that actually protects your phone in the event of a drop.

Rather than having slots, this smartphone case has a sliding drawer on the back that appears to be approximately a quarter of an inch deep. You can cram credit cards, driver’s license, and cash inside the wallet drawer and have them with you at all times. The only downside I see is that the case is rather thick and might not fit in your pocket if you’re the sort who wears skinny jeans.

The Commuter Series Wallet is available now from OtterBox for $44.95(USD).