All posts tagged: connecting

Disney, Epic Games Partner on Star Wars Game Connecting Theme Parks

Disney, Epic Games Partner on Star Wars Game Connecting Theme Parks

The Walt Disney Co. and Epic Games are debuting an unprecedented new effort that will connect one of Disney’s real-life theme park rides with a bespoke adventure in Fortnite. The company’s on Saturday unveiled Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run | Fortnite, which will enable visitors to the Smuggler’s Run attraction at Disney’s theme parks in Orlando and Anaheim to accept a special mission while in the queue for the ride, and if they succeed, they will get a unique Forsworn Trooper Outfit in a newly-created Fortnite adventure called Smugglers Gambit set in that same universe. “Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run | Fortnite marks the first time this attraction has reached beyond its physical walls into a connected game world — a story that starts in a queue in Orlando or Anaheim can now continue on a screen almost anywhere,” said Sean Shoptaw, executive vp of Disney Games and Digital Entertainment. “Smugglers Gambit, built in-house by an incredibly talented team, is an immersive, high-quality game, and together these experiences reflect our ambition to connect stories and worlds across …

Apple Briefly Posts China Guide for Connecting Siri to Qwen AI

Apple Briefly Posts China Guide for Connecting Siri to Qwen AI

Apple briefly published a support guide in China explaining how Mac users can connect Alibaba’s Qwen AI to Siri and Writing Tools, before pulling it entirely less than a day later. Reuters first spotted the Chinese-language guide on Apple’s support site on August 8, which explained how eligible Mac users in mainland China could connect Qwen, Alibaba’s family of generative AI models, to ‌Siri‌ and Writing Tools. According to the document, the extension required macOS 26.6 or later, needed users to sign into their own Qwen account, and specified that Alibaba was barred from using submitted materials to train or improve its models. ‌Siri‌ would be able to lean on Qwen for more detailed responses to certain requests, including analysis of photos and documents, while Writing Tools could use it to generate text and images. No equivalent guide was published for the iPhone or iPad. The setup closely mirrors Apple’s existing ChatGPT extension available elsewhere, which similarly lets ‌Siri‌ hand off complex requests and gives Writing Tools a “Compose” option, all on an opt-in basis. …

Flighty Update Adds Step-by-Step Guide for Connecting Flights

Flighty Update Adds Step-by-Step Guide for Connecting Flights

Popular flight tracking app Flighty has a new Connection Assistant that helps travelers make connecting flights at airports worldwide. Connection Assistant gives flyers a step-by-step guide for all connections on a trip. It will outline whether users need to go through passport control, recheck a bag, go through security, or change terminals, and it gives an estimate of how long the process will take. Adding a passport to the app will let users know if they can use e-gates or skip passport control. Users will get a heads-up on how tight a connecting flight is based on recommended minimums for planning purposes, and how long it typically takes to get from one flight to another. Flighty says Connection Assistant combines flight tracking data with airport-specific procedures and statistical modeling of millions of prior flights to create a custom walkthrough for each flight. Flighty is also now able to predict arrival and departure gates, gate range, or concourse when a flight is first added to the app. The predictions are based on the flight’s historical gates, …

Jake Reiner shares how he plans to ‘continue connecting’ with his late dad Rob Reiner

Jake Reiner shares how he plans to ‘continue connecting’ with his late dad Rob Reiner

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Jake Reiner, the eldest son of beloved Hollywood director Rob Reiner, has opened up about how he plans to remain connected to his late father. Rob and his wife, Michelle, were found fatally stabbed in their Los Angeles home last December. The couple’s youngest son, Nick, 32, has been charged with their deaths. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder. On Wednesday, for the first time since his parents’ tragic deaths, Jake, 35, returned to co-host his Los Angeles Dodgers podcast, The Incline. During the episode, he reflected on his relationship with his father, sharing that “when it comes to the Dodgers, my first love, it’s something I’ve always connected with my dad first and foremost.” “It’s something I will continue to connect with him for the rest of my life,” he said. Jake Reiner (left), the …

Psychologists map out the pathways connecting sacred beliefs to better sex

Psychologists map out the pathways connecting sacred beliefs to better sex

Viewing sexual intimacy as a sacred experience is linked to higher levels of sexual satisfaction and passion, a newly published psychological study reveals. The research shows that finding spiritual meaning in the bedroom operates by enhancing specific relationship habits, such as open communication and staying present in the moment, rather than just increasing the frequency of intimacy. These findings were published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. Psychologists often study how humans create meaning to navigate and enrich their daily lives. One way people construct meaning is through a process called sanctification. This occurs when a person perceives ordinary aspects of life as having a divine character or a deep, sacred significance. While the word sacred might bring traditional religion to mind, researchers note that sanctification is a psychological reality experienced by people both inside and outside of formal faith communities. When an individual views a part of their life as sacred, they tend to invest extra time and energy into making it flourish. They also tend to use these deeply meaningful areas …

Why business students should spend time connecting with nature

Why business students should spend time connecting with nature

In business, nature often gets reduced to numbers: emissions targets, sustainability metrics, biodiversity data. But when professionals rely too heavily on what’s measurable, they can risk missing what’s meaningful. One of the most effective ways to tackle this is through outdoor education. For business students and professionals, this approach offers something conventional leadership programs often miss. Outdoors, environmental issues become tangible. Ecosystems, soil, and water are no longer abstract case material, but living systems to notice and learn from. My own work with students studying for a Masters in business administration (MBA) shows how outdoor learning can support business professionals. It helps them rethink leadership, sustainability and their relationship with the living world in ways that classroom teaching rarely achieves. My students and I have headed out of seminar rooms at the University of Bath and into nearby fields and woodland to experience, instead of just think and talk about, sustainability. Some were hesitant at first. As they slowed down and tuned in, though, the conversations shifted. One told me they had not felt so …

The £33bn train line connecting millions that’s 90% underground | World | News

The £33bn train line connecting millions that’s 90% underground | World | News

A new £33.27 billion train line is underway, set to connect millions of people. The Chūō Shinkansen is a Japanese train line under construction between Tokyo and Nagoya, with plans to extend it to Osaka. The initial section is between Shinagawa Station in Tokyo and Nagoya Station in Nagoya, with stations in Sagamihara, Kōfu, Iida and Nakatsugawa. Following the completion of the Tokyo–Nagoya line, the line will extend to stations in Mie, Nara and Osaka. The line will have one station for each area it passes through. It is expected to connect Tokyo and Nagoya in 40 minutes, and eventually Tokyo and Osaka in 67 minutes, running at a maximum speed of 314 mph. About 90% of the 178-mile line to Nagoya will be in tunnels. Government permission to proceed with construction was granted in 2011. Construction is expected to cost over ¥9 trillion Japanese yen (approximately £33.27 billion) and commenced in 2014. The start date of commercial service is unknown, following Shizuoka Prefecture’s denial of permission for construction work on a portion of the …

EY hit 4x coding productivity by connecting AI agents to engineering standards

EY hit 4x coding productivity by connecting AI agents to engineering standards

Coding agents can generate thousands of lines of code in minutes. The problem: most of it can’t be deployed. It breaks internal standards, fails compliance checks, or creates more cleanup work than it saves. “You can generate a ton of code, but it doesn’t mean really anything, right? It’s got to be code that is integratable, that is compliant, and you don’t want to create more work on the back end just because you sped up the code generation process on the front end,” said Stephen Newman, EY Global CTO Engineering Leader. EY’s product development team solved this by connecting coding agents to their engineering standards, code repositories, and compliance frameworks. The result: 4x to 5x productivity gains across teams building EY’s suite of audit, tax, and financial platforms. But the gains didn’t come from just turning on a tool. Newman’s team spent 18 to 24 months building the cultural foundation and technical integrations that made semi-autonomous coding work at scale. The first step was cultural. EY started with GitHub Copilot-style tools, letting engineers get …