Thinking about science and technology in terms of return on investment misses the point. Here's what kids really need to know. That's what led me to become a professor. As a high school student, one of my major life goals was to figure out how to build an actual light sword. Doing so is all but impossible, so it didn't really matter if I went into engineering or science, but I pursued STEM just the same.

Charles McBee stops by Fox News Saturday Night With Jimmy Failla to give his take on actor John Boyega calling out the "Star Wars" franchise for its overwhelming whiteness. The White House slammed the "radical left" in a social media post Sunday, showing an AI-generated image of President Donald Trump wielding a lightsaber in celebration of May the Fourth, or "Star Wars Day." May 4 has long been regarded as a day to celebrate the iconic movie franchise as fans post on social media "May the Fourth be with you," an offshoot of the memorable Star Wars quote "May the force be with you." On Sunday, the White House took an opportunity to celebrate the popular day with a post on X, while also taking digs at the Trump administration's biggest critics. "Happy May the 4th to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting so hard to bring Sith Lords, Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, & well known MS-13 Gang Members, back into our Galaxy. You're not the Rebellion--you're the Empire," the White House wrote.

My background came from God of War … I've never worked on a shooter, and you need a different team to do that. You might as well be asking me to make a racing game. And eventually over time, we built that trust to the point where we ended up calling [the franchise] Jedi." The much contested Jedi eventually became Cal Kestis, first introduced in Jedi: Fallen Order. His original reveal saw a slew of criticism for being, well, a little bland, but four years on, it's hard to deny that Cal has won over both gamers and Star Wars fans alike. Case in point: in a recent Disney poll, asking fans to vote on which lightsaber from the Star Wars universe they'd like produced for retail, Cal beat out legendary characters such as Anakin Skywalker and Qui-Gon Jinn. Of course, making the main character a Jedi isn't just a play to Star Wars fans – it's also a clever game design move, given that the well-documented journey of a Jedi developing their skills perfectly mirrors that of a player progressing through a video game, something Asmussen describes as "one-to-one storytelling". "I was hoping that we could come up with a character that the player could go along on the ride with," he expands. "So, he starts off kind of raw.

A popular YouTuber has created the first functioning lightsaber, using propane gas burning at around 4,000 C to create a retractable plasma beam. Canadian James Hobson, known as'the Hacksmith', has a following of ten million subscribers and works on turning popular science fiction items into reality. Inspired by a love of Star Wars, he has previously made various lightsabers, but wanted to produce'the world's first, retractable, plasma-based' version. Canadian James Hobson, known as'the Hacksmith', has a following of ten million subscribers and works on turning popular science fiction items into a reality. He claims to have built'the world's first, retractable, plasma-based lightsaber' For this, the internet-famous engineers used liquid petroleum gas, a fuel tucked away in many sheds and often used to power barbecues.

It's almost 10 years since the release of the last single-player Star Wars game, Force Unleashed II, which feels a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away from EA's controversial Battlefront series. While those games offered some exhilarating moments of first-person blasting action, Star Wars fans have been longing for another epic adventure, something with the role-playing complexity of Knights of the Old Republic or the Force powers of Unleashed. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order promises to meet at least some of these criteria. Developed by Respawn Entertainment – the team behind sci-fi shooter series Titanfall and battle royale hit Apex Legends – Fallen Order introduces Cal Kestis, a Jedi padawan and one of the last of his kind. The game follows on from Revenge of the Sith, with the Jedi Order in ruin after being destroyed from within by Darth Vader.

In 1983, millions of unsold cartridges of the Atari game ET The Extra Terrestrial were secretly buried in a concrete-covered landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Thanks to extremely rushed development and alleged interference from Universal Pictures, the movie tie-in was one of the worst video games ever made, and a mass grave was the only option for the poor, unwanted cartridges. Unfortunately, like movies adapted from games, games adapted from movies are often bad. Historically, this has not been the result of too much interference from the movie studios that own the licences, but too little. Promising pop-culture properties such as Transformers, Robocop and Harry Potter have often been farmed out to contracted development studios that are then given far too little time to make anything half decent. The forthcoming Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, however, has better prospects than most.

Machine Learning is one of the most exciting fields in the world. Every week we discover something new, something amazing, something revolutionary. That's why we created This Week in Machine Learning! Each week we publish a curated list of Machine Learning stories as a resource to help you keep pace with all these exciting developments. New posts will be published here first, and previous posts are archived on the Udacity blog.

A working lightsaber became a dream for most Star Wars enthusiasts when they were first introduced to a galaxy far, far away. And Disney could finally turn this sci-fi device into reality at its 14-acre Star Wars Land, as a new patent describes plans for visitors to interact with what looks, feels and behaves like the real thing. The patent describes an'audience interaction projection system' that uses drones to send down beams of light towards the audience, who are given'faux lightsabers' to deflect the laser bolts back at the machine. Disney's latest patent describes an'audience interaction projection system' that uses drones to send down beams of light towards the audience, who are given'faux lightsabers' to deflect the laser bolts. Disney's latest patent describes plans for visitors to interact with what looks, feels and behaves like a real lightsaber.