All posts tagged: Gate

Neil Newbon to reprise Astarion for Baldur’s Gate 3 spin-off book

Neil Newbon to reprise Astarion for Baldur’s Gate 3 spin-off book

Published by Daniella Wilson

In exciting news for fans of Baldur’s Gate 3, a new prequel novel has now been announced, focused on the character played in the game by Neil Newbon. The spin-off book, titled Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion, has been written by T Kingfisher, and will be published by Random House Worlds on 29 September 2026. Not only that, but Newbon will reprise his role as Astarion for the audiobook. The synopsis for the book says: “This prequel novel follows the beloved character Astarion during his time in servitude to the vampire lord Cazador Szarr in the years leading up to the events of the video game. “Subsequent to its completion, Stephen Rooney, one of the senior writers of Baldur’s Gate 3, was consulted to ensure the novel’s authenticity within the game’s world and lore.” For background, it has been established in the games that Cazador Szarr carved up Astarion’s back and broke him both mentally and physically, taking him to the darkest of places. Neil Newbon. Scott Kirkland/Frank Micelotta/The Game Awards via Getty Images Excitingly, this isn’t …

Should We Grow Up With an Age Gate in This Hybrid World?

Should We Grow Up With an Age Gate in This Hybrid World?

Published by Jenni Sidey

Something shifted on April 15, 2026. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stood at a press conference and announced that the EU’s age verification app is technically ready — framing it with a deliberately disarming analogy: Platforms will ask for proof of age the way shops ask before selling alcohol. Familiar. Almost quaint. And that is precisely where the thinking should begin — because the stakes sitting behind this announcement are anything but simple. Why? The age verification app, technically available to citizens as of April 15, 2026, is designed to allow EU users to prove they are old enough to access legally age-restricted sites — pornography, gambling, alcohol purchases — as a key step in implementing the Digital Services Act and protecting minors online. The underlying cryptographic method is zero-knowledge proof, meaning a user can confirm they are over 18 without sharing any other personal data, and the app will be open-source, available to private companies and partner countries as a blueprint. Seven Member States — France, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, and …

Fare Gate Society – The Atlantic

Fare Gate Society – The Atlantic

Published by José Betancourt

Vandals have done some senseless stuff on Bay Area Rapid Transit. They have removed the fire extinguishers from the station walls and sprayed them all over the place, for example. But what particularly vexed Alicia Trost, the chief communications officer for the train system that connects San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, was their destruction of map display cases at stations across the system: “You could not see the maps for years.” Now you can. In August, BART completed the installation of new fare gates at station entrances and exits: Six-foot-tall saloon-style doors, made of plexiglass with metal frames, have replaced the waist-high barriers of the 1970s that were easy to duck or jump. The new gates have compelled more riders to pay their fare—revenue is projected to rise by $10 million a year. They have also led to an enormous drop in vandalism. Workers spent nearly 1,000 fewer hours cleaning up after unruly passengers in the six months following the gates’ installation, compared with the six months before. Crime on BART fell by 41 …

Oxford scientists achieve quantum gate teleportation between two quantum supercomputers

Oxford scientists achieve quantum gate teleportation between two quantum supercomputers

Published by Jenni Sidey

Light crossed the gap between two machines in an Oxford laboratory, and with it came a result that pushes quantum computing into new territory. Researchers built a system in which two separate quantum computers worked together as a single device, even though the modules sat about two meters apart. They did not rely on a direct wired transfer of quantum information. Instead, the machines shared it through photons, using a method known as quantum gate teleportation. That distinction matters. For years, one of the biggest problems in quantum computing has been scale. It is hard enough to control a small number of qubits, the quantum version of bits. Trying to pack huge numbers of them into one processor only makes the system more fragile, more noisy, and harder to run accurately. The Oxford team took a different route. Rather than chase one giant machine, they linked smaller modules that could cooperate. In effect, they showed that quantum computing may grow the way some classical supercomputers did, by connecting smaller units that act together. Quantum entanglement: …

Apollo Private Credit Fund Is Latest To Gate Investors As KKR Fund Gets Junked By Moody’s

Apollo Private Credit Fund Is Latest To Gate Investors As KKR Fund Gets Junked By Moody’s

Published by Jenni Sidey

Amid the ongoing fracturing of the private credit industry, which after enjoying years of stable, levered growth (and when it ran out of institutional greater fools, it aimed lower, toward HNWs and retail) finally hit a brick wall thanks to the Claude-inspired SaaSpocalypse, which has led to a historic surge in redemption requests across the biggest (and certainly smallest) names in the industry, last week we said that debt funds managed by powerhouse firms including Blackstone, BlackRock, Cliffwater, Morgan Stanley and Monroe Capital have agreed to honor only 70% of the $10.1bn of redemption requests they have faced, according to FT calculations, as fund after fund is gating investors. We also said that the number of both redemptions and gates is expected to spike over the coming weeks, as funds managed by Ares Management, Apollo Global, Blue Owl, Oaktree and Goldman Sachs tally up how many of their investors are heading for the exits, as discussed here. According to the above table, Apollo’s private credit fund, APODS, was supposed to report its Q1 outflow in early …

Brussels’ privacy reforms stumble out the gate – POLITICO

Brussels’ privacy reforms stumble out the gate – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

The Commission in November presented its “digital omnibus” plan as part of a bigger overhaul of data and AI laws that seeks to boost AI technology in Europe. It is one of (so far) 10 so-called omnibuses that aim to slash red tape and boost European competitiveness proposed by Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission. The new document, dated Feb. 20, was prepared by the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, currently held by Cyprus, and serves as a basis for national governments to negotiate a joint position on the privacy reforms. The Cypriots took aim at a core change to the data protection rulebook: how the law defines personal data. If approved, the change would move troves of data out of the scope of privacy protections. The revision sought to adapt the GDPR to a recent ruling by the EU’s top court (SRB v EDPS), which found that sometimes “pseudonymized” data, where a person’s details are obscured so they can’t be easily identified, could move it outside the strict privacy guardrails of the GDPR. That …

Great news for xAI: Grok is now pretty good at answering questions about Baldur’s Gate

Great news for xAI: Grok is now pretty good at answering questions about Baldur’s Gate

Published by skeptic

Different AI labs have different priorities. OpenAI has traditionally focused on consumer users, for instance, while its rival Anthropic tends to target enterprises. Elon Musk’s xAI, we discovered recently, has been placing particular emphasis on video-game walkthroughs. On Friday, Business Insider’s Grace Kay published a detailed and far-reaching report about xAI, the AI startup recently acquired by SpaceX, with particular emphasis on how Musk is making life difficult for employees. But this particular anecdote stood out: In one instance last year, a model release was delayed for several days because Musk was dissatisfied with how the chatbot answered detailed questions about the video game “Baldur’s Gate,” according to people familiar with the matter. High-level engineers were pulled from other projects to improve the responses before launch, they said. Of course, you can imagine the frustration of any respected and experienced engineer who shows up to work thinking he’ll be tackling fundamental problems of knowledge and machine intelligence, only to be sidetracked into helping a 54-year-old man beat his video game. But the anecdote raises an …

How the Golden Gate Bridge Was Built: A 3D Animated Introduction

How the Golden Gate Bridge Was Built: A 3D Animated Introduction

Published by José Betancourt

Built dur­ing the depths of the Great Depres­sion (from 1933 to 1937), the Gold­en Gate Bridge became the longest and tallest sus­pen­sion bridge in the world. Dur­ing its con­struc­tion, work­ers bat­tled harsh con­di­tions — strong winds, thick fog, and the risk of plung­ing into the San Fran­cis­co Bay. 11 souls per­ished. Like­wise, the engi­neer Joseph Strauss had to work through com­pli­cat­ed design chal­lenges to anchor the struc­ture in the deep waters, then spin mas­sive cables and ten­sion them across the 4,000-foot span. Cre­at­ed by the YouTube chan­nel Ani­ma­graffs, the 3D ani­mat­ed video above takes view­ers on a tech­ni­cal tour of the Gold­en Gate Bridge’s con­struc­tion, decon­struct­ing the engi­neer­ing that makes the bridge both beau­ti­ful and endur­ing. If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day. If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions …

Lily Allen and the beautiful secret about school gate mums that terrifies everyone else

Lily Allen and the beautiful secret about school gate mums that terrifies everyone else

Published by Daniella Wilson

Sign up to our free Living Well email for advice on living a happier, healthier and longer life Live your life healthier and happier with our free weekly Living Well newsletter Live your life healthier and happier with our free weekly Living Well newsletter With all the horror stories about mums at the school gate, it’s all to easy to assume the worst. Not to mention the rise of class WhatsApp groups being a toxic hive of competition – something I’ve also experienced from the wider community. But there’s actually a different side to school mums that Lily Allen has recently discovered during the agonising break-up of her marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour – how supportive they can be. “They were there when I was in a really tough spot,” Allen, 40, said in an interview for the March issue of Elle UK. “They could see how drawn I was and how withdrawn I became and how skinny I got and how sad I was.” The singer eventually spiralled into such emotional turmoil …