Kiran Upadhyay

Uber, the transportation and ride-sharing startup, has just announced that it has raised another $1.2 billion in funding, and we have separately confirmed with the company that this latest round was made at a $40 billion valuation. For now Uber is not revealing the investors but names that have been floated include Sequoia, TPG, Fidelity Investments, Wellington Management, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Menlo Ventures. We’re trying to nail down a more concrete list. What’s crazy is that $1.2 billion may not be the end of the round. CEO Travis Kalanick writes that it includes “additional capacity remaining for strategic investments.” VCExperts uncovered a recent filing in Delaware that detailed the potential final size of that round to be as high as $1.8 billion. If you’d like a clue as to where those extra strategic backers might come from, look East. “This financing will allow Uber to make substantial investments, particularly in the Asia Pacific region,” he continu

Apple is participating in this year’s Hour of Code, the second annual worldwide event designed to help spark interest in and provide access to coding education among youth and students. Apple’s participation will involve offering free one-hour workshops at its Apple Store retail locations, during which they’ll provide attendees with an introduction to basic computer science concepts. Code.org is the non-profit behind the Hour of Code movement, and is working with a number of corporations to organize this year’s movement. The group has funding from Microsoft and others, and has a goal of reaching 100 million students through its program by year-end. Apple’s workshops will run on December 11th, and will occur in international retail stores as well as domestic, whereas last year they were only available in U.S. locations. Apple is also going to be rolling out a full week’s worth of accompanying speakers and other events, to support Computer Science Education Week, and pointing would

When Bitsbox co-founder Scott Lininger learned to code, it was on a TRS-80 color computer his mom and dad bought him when he was a kid. He says he taught himself coding by copying from the book that came with the computer. Now a dad himself, Lininger wanted to offer his daughter the opportunity to experience learning to code much in the same way he did, but couldn’t find a service that he felt focused on the part of learning that’s really necessary: the part where you practice actually typing code. “Most of the [learn-to-code products for kids] are fantastic,” says Lininger, who left his job at Google around six months ago, where he previously worked as a senior software engineer within its SketchUp division after selling his startup to the company back in 2007. “All the drag-and-drop tools, they teach you the grammar, the syntax, and the structure of language,” Lininger explains. “If you’re going to be able to write something in German, you’re going to have to understand the ru

The 92nd annual White House Christmas tree lighting ceremony is getting a tech twist this year. Over 300,000 people, mostly young girls, participated in Google’s Made with Code campaign to program the way the lights will dance on the 56 official White House Christmas trees during this evening’s lighting ceremony. We don’t know what exactly 300,000 different lighting programs will look like until the actual event tonight. You can watch it live on the official White House YouTube channel at 5 pm EST. Brittany Wenger, 20, is one of 10 chosen to go and participate in the ceremony tonight. Those in the program range in age from 4 to 20, but most are in their teens or tweens. Wenger says each girls’ code has a very specific time, down to the “exact second.” She tried to describe how her code will look when it’s time to shine. “Mine kind of starts out blue and turns into a greenish thing and goes like a funnel,” she explained. Wenger is a student at Duke University and an ambassado

Mozilla today rolled out Firefox 34. While most browser updates these days aren’t all that exciting, this one includes a couple of interesting new features. What most users in North America will notice right off the bat, however, is that this is the first version of Firefox with Yahoo as its default search experience. It’s easy enough to change the default search engine in Firefox, and I would guess that most current users will quickly switch back to Google. The Yahoo Search experience, which the company specifically tweaked for Firefox users, is perfectly all right for most searches. But at the end of the day, it feels like it doesn’t have some of Google’s smarts, especially when it comes to queries that would usually trigger Google’s Knowledge Graph. With today’s update, Mozilla is also moving its WebRTC-powered chat tool “Firefox Hello” out of the beta channel and into its mainstream release. The organization built this service, which allows you to start audio and video chats

The move to offer online shoppers earlier access to Black Friday deals – beginning as early as Thanksgiving Day this year – resulted in record-breaking numbers of consumers shopping on mobile, reports PayPal. Based on its online commerce data, the company reports having seen a 47% increase in PayPal global mobile payment volume on Thanksgiving compared with Thanksgiving 2013, and a 62% increase for Black Friday 2014 over last year. Meanwhile, the company also saw a 43% increase in the number of customers shopping through PayPal mobile this Thanksgiving, and a 51% increase across the same metric on Black Friday. PayPal sees $1 in every $6 of e-commerce flowing through its network, which puts it in a unique position to analyze shopping data and draw insights. To give you a sense of its footprint on mobile, PayPal says it processed $27 billion in mobile payment volume in 2013, up 99% over 2012. In the U.S., Thanksgiving Day is typically spent with families, so it’s not surprising to

Last week, TechCrunch broke the news that Whitney Wolfe and a group of other former Tinder employees are launching a new Tinder competitor called Bumble. This week, the app went live in the App Store, giving us our first real look at how the product works. Spoiler Alert: It’s almost identical to Tinder, complete with the design of the profile pages, settings, and swipe functionality. Within settings, you can see that discovery preferences are just like Tinder, with a slider for age and options to search men, women, or both. Users have no control over distance (with matches being served closest to farthest away. That feature likely has to do with offering as many matches as possible while seeding the app to enough users for distance settings to make a difference. But there is only one significant thing that separates Bumble from Tinder: On Bumble, girls hold all the power. Boys are not allowed to send the first message on Bumble. Girls must initiate the conversation with their

Google today announced that its Cloud Platform is now in compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS). This means developers can now hold, process and exchange credit card information from branded credit cards on Google’s cloud computing platform without running afoul of existing regulations. Until now, Google advised its users that its cloud service wasn’t meant to process or store credit card information. It’s important to remember that just because Google is now compliant, developers can’t just suddenly store all of this information on Google’s servers. It does mean, however, that developers can now use Google’s platform to build their own compliant solutions. Google’s reference customer for today’s news is WePay (which also today announced that it is using Google as its public cloud provider). “Google Cloud Platform will enable WePay to process our partners’ transactions in a fully scalable, highly available environment with robust security fe

Your phone is dead. Or you’re driving. Or you’re in a meeting. Your girlfriend/boyfriend/lover-person is trying to call you. You didn’t pick up, so now they’re assuming you’re either a) ignoring them or b) dead. Your phone knows better — hell, with all of the sensors and data crammed in that thing, it probably knows exactly what you’re up to. Wouldn’t it be nice if your phone could lend a hand here? Meet Status, an iOS/Android app built to do just that. Status is sort of like the AIM away messages of yesteryear — but automatic. Or like an automated version of Twitter, back when Twitter was more about telling people what you were up to than it was about yelling at each other and making jokes about popular things. Status uses a big ol’ array of data to figure out what you’re up to, and automatically shares that information with a finely-honed list of friends. At home, or work, or one of your favorite regular haunts? Status will pick that up by way of geofencing (and the Wi-

Ultra-hot payments startup Stripe has brought on $70 million in new funding that will double its valuation less than a year after its last raise. The round, which was first reported by the Financial Times, brings the total amount Stripe has raised to more than $200 million. With the new financing, Thrive Capital joins Stripe’s list of investors, which also includes Sequoia, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, and Khosla Ventures. The company’s valuation has increased to $3.5 billion, which is up for $1.75 billion during its last round. After its last raise, Stripe said it was focused on international growth. Since the company couldn’t be reached for comment, we’re assuming that’s still the case. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Via

Have you ever wondered how a jet engine works? It’s a complicated bit of science that expands far beyond the scope of MakeUseOf… or does it? Check out this awesome animated infographic that breaks down how a jet engine is able to generate its power. After looking it over, you’ll have at least a basic understanding of how a jet is able to generate speed. Next time you need whip out some random knowledge with your friends, you know who to thank! Animagraffs Click Each Image To Enlarge

Skype co-founder Janus Friis is backing a new communications app called Wire, out now for iOS, Android and Mac OS X. The app itself is the reimagining of how a communications tool like Skype should operate had it been built today. Much of that, in Wire’s case, means under-the-hood improvements that users don’t necessarily see, such as advancements in media processing, audio technology, file compression and delivery, and more. Wire pairs this more solid infrastructure with an uncluttered, simple design that will likely be the initial attraction for mainstream users. Skype, of course, is one of the top communication apps in the world, but it’s also running on dated technology. Users still experience issues with call quality, connection problems, synchronization and more. “Skype was launched more than a decade ago. A lot has changed since then – we are all used to free calls and texting, and we have taken to carrying our computers in our pockets,” said Friis in a statement about W

Back in June, we wrote about how Amazon was preparing to take on companies like Seamless, Grubhub and DeliveryHero with a restaurant takeout and delivery service that would sit within its Amazon Local app and website. Now that service is live. The Takeout & Delivery feature was quietly turned on over last weekend — when many were probably still working their way through Thanksgiving leftovers. “The holidays are busy. We can help,” the company notes in the app. We have tried out different addresses in Amazon Local and it looks like for now it’s only live in Seattle, covering around 20 restaurants for delivery and around 110 for takeout orders that you pick up yourself. As with other Amazon services, Takeout & Delivery lets you charge everything to your existing Amazon account. As we and others have reported, Amazon has a bigger ambition to build out its local commerce services into a larger, physical extension of what it has built online. This includes what Reuters has d

We’ve seen some pretty weird startup spaces in our time, but not often in shipping containers. Containerville, which has just launched in London, is an unusual take on startup offices. Some 30 shipping containers have been arranged over two floors, “up-cycled” into modern work spaces, just by the Regents Canal. Each container can accommodate up to eight desks, with each container fitted out to function as a modern work space, complete with a galley kitchen. Coming with 100MB broadband, these ‘plug and play’ offices are close to the key tech startup cluster of East London. They add to the multitude of co-working and fast office space London can now offer, from The Trampery, TechHub, Campus London, Central Working and many, many others. Via

Researchers have uncovered a group of Wall Street-savvy hackers that has penetrated the e-mail accounts of more than 100 companies, a feat that has allowed them to obtain highly valuable plans concerning corporate acquisitions and other insider information. FIN4, as the group is known, relies on a set of extremely simple tactics that in many cases has allowed them to remain undetected since at least the middle of 2013, according to a report published Monday from security firm FireEye. Members boast a strong command of the English language and knowledge of corporate finance and Fortune 500 culture. They use that savvy to send highly targeted spearphishing e-mails that harvest login credentials for Microsoft Outlook accounts. The group then uses compromised accounts of one employee, customer, or partner to send spearphishing e-mails to other company insiders. At times, the attackers will inject a malicious message into an ongoing e-mail discussion among multiple people, furthering t

Are you still trying to get an invite to Google’s Inbox? Did you miss that massive invite-spree last month, where everyone who asked nicely got an invite? Fear not! They’re doing it again. If you still need an invite, Google is doing the happy-hour thing again this afternoon. [Update: the happy hour window is now over. You can still try the below steps, but your email might go ignored.] How to get in: Compose an email from a Gmail address (but, sadly, not a Gmail For Work address. Those still don’t work.) Send it to inbox@google.com between 10 am and noon pacific today. Tada! Last time this happened, the onslaught of emails hit Google so hard that their mailbox actually started rejecting emails, resulting in Google extending the spree for a little while longer than planned. No guarantees that’ll happen this time, so be quick if you want in. Via

Whoops! Just a fun bit of trivia for the coders out there: PSY’s Gangnam Style has been viewed so many times that it broke YouTube’s view counter, making it the very first video to break the reaches of a 32-bit integer. Not sure what the hell that means? Just know that when you’re coding, you often have to consider how you’re storing data like numbers. Do you want a 32-bit integer, or a 64-bit integer? A 32-bit integer* takes up a bit less memory, but can only be used to store numbers from −2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. A 64-bit integer is a bit heftier in its memory usage, but can store numbers from −9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. (* WE’RE IGNORING THE MATTER OF SIGNED/UNSIGNED INTEGERS FOR THE SAKE OF SIMPLICITY HERE) You know the Pac Man kill screen, where things freak the hell out after level 256? Similar idea, just with 8-bit numbers versus 32-bit. As of yesterday’s landmark and subsequent code change, YouTube can now theoretically support v

Just before Thanksgiving here in the U.S., a Microsoft blog post accidentally leaked the company’s intention to buy mobile email application Acompli. Though the blog post itself was pulled down, the URL still revealed the forthcoming acquisition. Today, the two companies are officially confirming the news, with the Acompli team of around two dozen joining Microsoft as a part of a $200 million+ deal. Recode was first to report the $200 million figure, and we’ve also confirmed. We’ve also heard this was an all-cash deal. “18 months ago we started building a team and a product around the idea that we could make mobile email better,” reads an Acompli blog post announcing the news. “Today that journey continues as part of a larger organization with the technology, talent, and market reach that will help us take the vision of Acompli to hundreds of millions of mobile users across the world.” Acompli was backed by $7.3 million from Redpoint and others for its mobile email app designed

Google’s recently released Android 5.0 mobile operating system is currently running on fewer than 0.1 percent of handsets, according to data released by the company. The new software, code-named ‘Lollipop,’ was made generally available November 12. Carriers are currently rolling Lollipop out to consumers, according to their own schedule. The limited uptake of Android’s fifth version so far underscores a wider problem in the mobile world: Fragmentation. It took Windows Phone 8.1, for example, nearly half a year to make it to the 50 percent market share mark. And as Wired notes, Apple is seeing slower adoption of its new iOS 8 than some expected. Current reports indicate that Lollipop is seeing increasing over-the-air updates, which could quickly push its market share numbers higher. Google was not immediately available to comment on the current Lollipop figures. However, even if Lollipop manages to grow its share of the Android install base through the end of the year, it will l

Chrome OS is blasting it’s way haphazardly onto different form factors – can it really take on the all-in-one desktop? Not too long ago, we took a look at the ASUS Chromebox, a device reminiscent of a Mac Mini which ran the Chrome OS operating system, but required the user to provide their own monitor and speakers. LG has taken that concept to it’s logical conclusion with the Chromebase ($329). This device is also a desktop version of a Chromebook, but is more reminiscent of an iMac rather than a Mac Mini. The result? You get an entire system in one physical unit (dubbed “all-in-one”), which can lead to some overall cost and space savings. But does it really save you that much money? Is it a system worth owning? Keep reading to find out more, and to enter the giveaway for a chance to win the Chromebase! About the LG Chromebase The LG Chromebase looks very much like an iMac: the internals are built-into the rear of the screen. You can grab it from Amazon for just $329. The in

For a year now, Mozilla has categorically stated that it wouldn’t release a version of Firefox for iOS because Apple won’t let it use its own web engine on its platform. With a new CEO on board, however, it looks like Mozilla’s position may be changing. At an internal Mozilla event in Portland today, the organization talked about the need to get its browser onto iOS. “We need to be where our users are,” Firefox release manager Lukas Blakk wrote on Twitter today (quoting Mozilla’s VP for Firefox Jonathan Nightingale, we think). “So we’re going to get Firefox on iOS.” Apple has been very restrictive with regard to third-party browser engines on its platform. Current third-party iOS browsers like Chrome or Opera can only operate on iOS because they use Apple’s own JavaScript and rendering engines, for example — or, as in the case of Opera, by rendering sites on a server and then sending them to the device. It’s unclear how Mozilla plans to bring Firefox to iOS, but given that Appl

OAKLAND, CA—Newly discovered court documents from two federal criminal cases in New York and California that remain otherwise sealed suggest that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is pursuing an unusual legal strategy to compel cellphone makers to assist investigations In both cases, the seized phones—one of which is an iPhone 5S—are encrypted and cannot be cracked by federal authorities. Prosecutors have now invoked the All Writs Act, an 18th-century federal law that simply allows courts to issue a writ, or order, which compels a person or company to do something. Some legal experts are concerned that these rarely made public examples of the lengths the government is willing to go in defeating encrypted phones raise new questions as to how far the government can compel a private company to aid a criminal investigation. Two federal judges agree that the phone manufacturer in each case—one of which remains sealed, one of which is definitively Apple—should provide aid to the govern

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream NASA is gearing up for its manned mission to Mars, and a key step will be Thursday’s launch of the Orion capsule to a destination 3,600 miles from Earth, loaded with sensors rather than people for this initial trial run. The test launch will use NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System in the future, but for this trial run it’ll be using an existing Delta IV Heavy rocket starting at 7:05 AM on Thursday, should everything go as planned. This is just a very early step in the overall trajectory of achieving a manned journey to Mars – the SLS system is being groomed to first send humans to destinations such as deep space asteroids sometime in the next decade, before eventually making the trek to Mars at some later date. Tune in to the video feed above at 12 PM ET to hear more about NASA’s mission this week, and its larger goals related to manned Mars missions and the tech required to get there.

Apple has a new patent granted by the USPTO today (via AppleInsider), which describes a system that can actually re-orient an iPhone during freefall, changing the angle of its eventual impact with the ground after first determining how best to shift it to make sure the fall does as little damage as possible. The patent also includes descriptions of other more advanced and fantastic scenarios, including ejection devices for cables, and even retractable air foils to control the angle of descent, like those Elon Musk is testing for his reusable rockets at Space X, but built into an iPhone. The actual meat of the patent has far more realistic goals, and uses existing tech to control the angle of a fall – the iPhone’s internal vibration motor. It’s still not super likely we’ll see these incorporated into new devices, as the tech described is a variation of the vibration motors contained in models that launched before the iPhone 6. The 6 and 6 Plus contain a different kind of tech to not

The boxed copy sales model for professional software is dead, and increasingly companies are realizing that charging certain customers at all doesn’t make much sense. Microsoft figured it out, and Autodesk is expanding the pool of people who get free access to include all students, teachers and schools at academic institutions around the world. That’s in addition to the U.S., where it made its software free earlier this year as part of the ConnectED program created by President Barack Obama. The move means that Autodesk software, including AutoCAD, Sketchbook, 3D Max, Maya and more, will be available to around 680 million students and teachers across 800,000 secondary and post-secondary schools, according to the company, without any paid license required. The catch is that some cloud services and support require additional paid subscriptions, but that’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to enterprise software sales model these days. Free software for schools and studen

There are many things that the next generation of geek won’t get to experience. The sound of the 56k modem connecting when your parents are sleeping in the next room. Burning CDs. Being somewhere and not knowing something, and just having to deal with it because you don’t have a space computer with pretty much all of humanity’s collective knowledge in your pocket. The latest pillar of yesteryear to come crumbling down? Clip art. Microsoft has just announced that it’s killing off the last trace of clip art in its Office products, instead pointing users in need of imagery toward Bing Image Search. Why? Because most people are just getting their images online anyway. Bing images won’t be vector art (and thus not as resizable), and they probably won’t be as gloriously ’90s, but you’ll at least have a whole lot more options. The Bing Image Search built into Office is essentially the same one that’s built into its standard search engine, just with Creative Commons filters switc

Holidays are a time for families to come together, catch up over great food and drinks, and determine all the technical problems that need solving throughout the house. Indeed, for children growing up in the digital age, the holidays ultimately boil down to free (or more accurately, meal-subsidized) technical support for our most cherished loved ones. Kids: Amazon has you covered. Well, almost. This past week, Amazon publicly introduced an early release of Selling Services, which we had previously mentioned the company was working on a few months ago. Amazon is developing a marketplace that offers after-sale services such as car alarm installation, iPhone repair, and computer hardware setup to consumers buying relevant products. Today, the marketplace is available in 15 early rollout cities, including New York City and Lexington, Kentucky. After-sale services are among the highest profit margin revenue streams for retailers, so it is little surprise that Amazon is jumping into

Need more space on your Android smartphone or tablet? Want to play tunes from another device, or view videos and pictures stored elsewhere? You could be planning on a trip and want to take some movies with you, but don’t want to fill up your phone’s storage. If your Android has a microSD card slot, then the problem is easily resolved. You buy a high capacity microSD card. On the other hand, if you can’t afford greater storage but have some USB flash devices laying around, why not connect one of these? You can’t? Of course you can! It’s all thanks to the magic of USB OTG, “on the go”! What Is USB OTG? OTG stands for “On-The-Go” and is a facility we can utilise by means of a USB OTG cable. This is usually a short cable with a wide “female” end for inserting a USB device, and a narrow, “male” connector for hooking it up to your phone. What OTG does is allow your Android device to act as a host, thereby enabling other USB devices to be attached not just physically, but to the o

Five movie screeners from Sony Pictures have made their way onto torrent sites after the studio’s computer system was hacked earlier this week. These include unreleased titles “Annie,” “Mr. Turner,” “Still Alice,” and “To Write Love On Her Arms,” as well as World War II drama “Fury.” The latter has been in theaters for over six weeks, but is now the second most popular pirated film with more than 1.2 million downloads as of 11AM on Sunday, notes Variety . The leak is most likely related to the hacking last week of one of Sony Pictures’ servers, which caused all computers used by the studio to go down. An image with the words “Hacked by #GOP” (which stands for Guardians of Peace, not the Republican Party) appeared on employees’ computer screens, along with a demand for access to financial documents. The studio is also reportedly investigating a link between the attack and North Korea, as retaliation for “The Interview,” a comedy film about a CIA plot to assassinate Kim Jong-Un.

Sony’s PlayStation Vita isn’t exactly setting the handheld world on fire in terms of sales, but it is a solid console with a decent lineup of games. It also plays quite nicely with the PlayStation 4, with games available via Cross-Buy and remote streaming possible. With the hardware not selling at a staggering rate, it makes sense that Sony would try to find another way to use the tech that powers it –and that’s exactly what the PlayStation TV does. PlayStation TV is a Vita tucked inside an Apple TV-like device. Is it worth buying? Does it deliver a solid gameplay experience with Vita games, PS1 classics, and streaming from the PS4? Does it have a strong entertainment offering outside of gaming? All these questions and more will be answered in this review! Best of all, we’re giving a PlayStation TV away to one lucky reader! Keep reading through to the bottom of this review to enter for your chance to win! Sony’s PlayStation TV was released several months ago in Japan with the

What would that glorious The Force Awakens trailer look like if George Lucas went back and fiddled with it, as he so loves to do? Probably something like this… The number of references and jabs crammed in here is off the charts. I won’t spoil them all, but my favorite? The unnecessary rocks at 0:20. (If you don’t get that one, don’t worry — that’s probably a good thing. Here.) (Joking aside, George Lucas does have a pretty big role in the development of Star Wars VII. While he’s neither directing nor writing the movie, the story concept is his and he was on set as a creative consultant.) On a side note, I can not comprehend how someone managed to blast this out in just about 36 hours after the trailer’s release. Helluva job, Michael Shanks.

We don’t often see companies announce funding rounds on the weekend, but that’s not stopping Lazada, the Rocket Internet-backed e-commerce firm in Southeast Asia, from revealing today that it has pulled in €200 million (around $250 million) in fresh capital. The round is lead by Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, which manages a $100-billion-plus portfolio and this year invested in another Amazon rival: Snapdeal in India. The deal includes participation from a number of existing Lazada investors, including Kinnevik, Verlinvest and Rocket Internet, and it values the company at €1 billion ($1.25 billion). Lazada operates in six countries in Southeast Asia — Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — largely in tandem with Zalora, another well-backed e-commerce service started by Rocket Internet. This new funding round takes Lazada to more than $700 million in money from investors. Its most recent round was also $250 million back in December 2013, which include

Almost every tech hardware maker is basically racing smart watches out the door, but Sony is looking at how it can re-invent the basic timekeeping device itself with a new special project that was only just now revealed to be associated with the Japanese electronics giant, despite popping up on a crowdfunding site months ago. The so-called FES Watch, which uses e-paper for both the face and a wraparound band, initially kept the Sony name out of the mix to see how well it would fare in the public forum without the power of branding. FES Watch was instead billed as the product of a company called Fashion Entertainments, but that group is actually a team of Sony employees looking at how e-paper can be used to manufacture fashion goods. The WSJ reports that it wants to make e-paper thought of as a fabric in the fashion realm, good for making things like watches, bow ties, hat accessories or any other number of worn items. The Fashion Entertainments unit is led by Hiroki Totoki, the new

The first Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer features all kinds of things that make my diehard Star Wars soul quiver and dance, but the crossguard on the dark side lightsaber spotted in the teaser, while initially cool, increasingly isn’t one of them. It looks ultimately very impractical, and I couldn’t help but to offer some engineering tips for the weapon’s designer. Let me explain: While the design looks like it was inspired by the kind of guard you’d see on a claymore, for instance, which prevents an opponent’s blade from sliding down yours and, say, cutting off your fingers, it seems unlikely to serve that function. The emitters extend from the hilt, as you can see, which presumably means they’re vulnerable to the opponent’s blade, which, per Star Wars lore, can cut through pretty much anything (except for Mandalorian iron, Force-imbued weapons and some other noteworthy materials). The whole point, however, of not using metal for the sword itself is that lightsabers can cut