Links and Notes - January 17th 2026

This blog now runs on Obsidian

Ok that's definitely a click baity title. But really. I am using obsidian for all my writing of my posts and publishing it to ghost via the api. The delivery of the blog and the structuring and all the CMS stuff happens on ghost. But the writing process happens where I make the vast majority of my notes now: Obsidian.

All the magic is happening via a plugin that I AI coded (I hate the term "vibe" coding) without me ever touching an editor. As of this morning, in between making tea and getting laundry done, I made it mostly feature complete for myself by supporting update posts too. You can see the work I did by using AI only over here.

While I'm thrilled to have done this, I also have lots of muddling and conflicted thoughts which I have shared over here on threads.

Suffice to say that there's a lot to write on this topic. But that's for a series of essays I've planned on the topic starting from the meaning and measures of intelligence to working through what art is and all the way up to (but not limited to) the implications of this technology on the social fabric of humanity.

ChatGPT says hello to ads

In the coming weeks, we’re also planning to start testing ads in the U.S. for the free and Go tiers, so more people can benefit from our tools with fewer usage limits or without having to pay. Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions will not include ads.

This is a completely natural move and I suspect one that many players in the space, especially Google, will likely be looking at closely. Given how utterly expensive the current state of inference is for AI, it has been economically untenable from the start to offer this service as a free experience, even in limited forms.

Of course I have question marks but I cannot say I dislike the wording of OpenAIs approach to this. The mock-ups of ads look pretty intelligent and actually helpful. Someone on Threads mentioned that they think of ads on Instagram as a standard for what useful or entertaining ads can look like; I don't disagree. Where ads on Google search have taken space deceptively and serve more to get in the way, Instagram ads, though repetitive at times, has actually threaded a line into being entertainment. And they need to be. It's the nature of the platform. One wonders if open ai can make their ads look as interesting and part of the experience.

On a tangential note, I wonder what the standards for ads will be over time. In one of the images shared we see ads for possible matching items for a recipe. Combine this with the idea of how various LLMs want to operate your tasks for you. Does this vision of ads lead to something where you don't click a link and go away? You instead take action directly through the ad? Does AI sign you up for newsletters or software? What types of products work best for AI ads anyway?

New worlds indeed

Hytale is alive! Finally

Speaking of new worlds. After so. Many. Years. Hytale has finally launched to the public. From a product that had the world's attention to an acquired abandonware, to discontinued, to rescued and released in a frenzy. It's been a ride. And so far, judging by the Reddit it's receiving an incredible amount of support and love from the community. They deserve it honestly. For the team to step in, get it back from Riot, and bring it to the fans who kept the interest in it alive in the first place, going so far as to host podcasts based on a product that didn't exist yet, it was really an example of he right thing being done in a time where that rarely happens. Even IGN manages to give them a money quote in their review

It's almost like someone's wishlist of things Minecraft can't or will never do.

I for one can't wait to load it up as soon as I have a block of free time.

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Posted on January 17 2026 by Adnan Issadeen