• Get NBA League Pass for up to 55 percent off right now

    January 17, 2026

    NBA League Pass, the streaming service that lets you catch hundreds of out-of-market NBA games, is on sale right now for up to 55 percent off. The League Pass Premium subscription is on sale for $75, down from $160, while League Pass Standard is marked down to $50 from $110. We’re almost halfway through the season at this point, so it makes sense for a service like League Pass to start offering some discounts. The Standard plan includes commercials and support for only one device at a time, while the Premium tier offers no commercials, in-arena streams during breaks in…

  • Who gets to inherit the stars? A space ethicist on what we’re not talking about

    January 17, 2026

    In October, at a tech conference in Italy, Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos predicted that millions of people will be living in space “in the next couple of decades” and “mostly,” he’d said, “because they want to,” because robots will be more cost-effective than humans for doing the actual work in space. No doubt that’s why my ears perked up when, at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco weeks later, I found an on-stage prediction by Will Bruey, the founder of space manufacturing startup Varda Space Industries, so striking. Rather than robots doing the work as Bezos envisioned, Bruey…

  • How to Build a Self-Evaluating Agentic AI System with LlamaIndex and OpenAI Using Retrieval, Tool Use, and Automated Quality Checks

    January 17, 2026

    In this tutorial, we build an advanced agentic AI workflow using LlamaIndex and OpenAI models. We focus on designing a reliable retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) agent that can reason over evidence, use tools deliberately, and evaluate its own outputs for quality. By structuring the system around retrieval, answer synthesis, and self-evaluation, we demonstrate how agentic patterns go beyond simple chatbots and move toward more trustworthy, controllable AI systems suitable for research and analytical use cases. !pip -q install -U llama-index llama-index-llms-openai llama-index-embeddings-openai nest_asyncio import os import asyncio import nest_asyncio nest_asyncio.apply() from getpass import getpass if not os.environ.get("OPENAI_API_KEY"): os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"] = getpass("Enter OPENAI_API_KEY:…

  • 2026 Opel Astra: New look for Holden’s former small car

    January 17, 2026

    The 2026 Opel Astra range has made its public debut at the Brussels motor show, shortly after being revealed online by the Stellantis-owned German brand. Like the related Peugeot 308, the Opel (and Vauxhall) Astra gets a refreshed design with some choice technology and trim updates to keep the compact hatch and wagon range competitive with the likes of the Volkswagen Golf and aforementioned Pug. Headlining the changes is the brand’s latest ‘Visor’ design language, which incorporates a permanently illuminated ‘Blitz’ emblem up front, and bolsters the new Intelli-Lux HD adaptive headlights which feature more than 50,000 elements – said…

  • The plan for a gaming-themed Atari hotel in Las Vegas has reportedly been scrapped

    January 17, 2026

    Six years after the announcement of plans to build Atari Hotels in eight cities across the US, including Las Vegas, only one now seems to be moving forward, in Phoenix, Arizona. The Las Vegas deal ultimately “didn’t come to fruition,” spokesperson Sara Collins told Las Vegas Sun this week, and Atari Hotels is putting its focus into the Phoenix site “for the time being.” Phoenix was always meant to be the first site, followed by other hotels in Austin, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle. But Las Vegas is now apparently off the table, and there…

  • The ugliest new vehicles on sale in Australia in 2026

    January 17, 2026

    Taste is subjective. We can quantify things like performance, interior space and efficiency with data, but ugly is just that: ugly. We can’t really measure ugliness, but we know it when we see it. And much like beauty, ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. The CarExpert team will often have spirited discussions about which vehicles look good and which don’t, so here are some of the latter. CarExpert can save you thousands on a new car. Click here to get a great deal. Let’s be clear: we’re not calling any of these vehicles bad. Just ugly. Let’s set…

  • Who bought electrified cars in 2025, and who’s sticking with petrol and diesel?

    January 17, 2026

    Australia’s new‑vehicle market hit a new record of 1,241,037 sales in 2025, but behind the breakdown of combustion-powered, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric cars, there is data that shows which buyer group was most attracted to which vehicle type. At a high level, buyers are splitting into four distinct camps: battery-electric vehicles (EVs), plug‑in hybrids (PHEVs), hybrids (HEVs), and the still-dominant world of petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles – including mild-hybrids (MHEVs). Based on 2025 volume, that looks like: EVs: 103,270 sales (8.3 per cent of the market) – including just two hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) PHEVs: 53,484 sales (4.3 per cent) – including…

  • Amazon’s live-action God of War adaptation adds Teresa Palmer

    January 17, 2026

    Amazon is reportedly adding Teresa Palmer (The Fall Guy, Warm Bodies, Hacksaw Ridge) to its pantheon of Norse gods for its God of War TV show adaptation. As first reported by Deadline, Palmer will play Sif, Thor’s wife and eventual leader of the Aesir, in the live-action adaptation. It may not carry as much weight as the casting of the video game’s protagonist that was revealed earlier this week to be Ryan Hurst, but it could hint at the direction the TV show may take. While Sif plays a minor role in the God of War Ragnarok game, the early…

  • TikTok’s latest spinoff app feels a lot like Quibi, but with shorter and cornier content

    January 17, 2026

    In another attempt to reduce our attention spans to mush, TikTok has released the PineDrama app, which offers serialized drama series that are roughly a minute per episode. As first spotted by Business Insider, the app is designed exactly like TikTok, but instead of trendy dance videos, you can scroll through and watch “micro dramas.” For those new to the category, micro dramas are bite-sized TV shows shot in vertical video and available in minute-long episodes. Don’t expect any nominations for Best Original Screenplay with series like The Officer Fell For Me or Married to my past life’s nemesis, since…

  • Trump administration’s legal setbacks are good news for offshore wind — and the grid

    January 17, 2026

    The Trump administration suffered a series of legal setbacks this week after judges allowed work to restart on several offshore wind farms under construction on the East Coast. The Department of the Interior had ordered a stop to five projects totaling 6 gigawatts of generating capacity in December, citing national security concerns. The judicial orders will allow three projects to resume construction: Revolution Wind off Rhode Island, Empire Wind off New York, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off — you guessed it — Virginia. The developers each filed lawsuits shortly after the Trump administration issued the stop work order, which had been…