Writing | Omar Bohsali

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Etch your name upon the rocks of eternity with the light of your soul.

metadata-enforcer v2: Django-like class definitions for Obsidian frontmatter.

Manage your Obsidian frontmatter and YAML metadata with Django-like class definitions.

pg-fft: Fast Fourier Transforms in PostgreSQL

Compute Fast Fourier Transforms from the comfort of your own PostgreSQL database.

chat.xml: Be sovereign, own your chats.

Save your chat sessions in XML. Own your tokens, own your thinking.

"Talking Your Book" and Memecoins: it's all just data compression

F5<GO>, are you long treasurys, meme-coins, shibboleth, encrypted messages, and it's all just data compression.

Manage your Obsidian Metadata with metadata-enforcer

a metadata linter + validator that lints, corrects, and enforces constraints and referential integrity in your obsidian vault.

Unnecessary Questions

Just because we can put words together and form a question, that doesn't mean we need to answer it.

Introspection, Narcissism, and the FTC

Make yourself more awesome introspect by thinking like the FTC.

Paradox and Profit: Python's type and Kegan's Model of Adult Development

What if instead of tragedy we chose free cash flow?

llm.sql: Implementing GPT-2 in PostgreSQL

Full forward pass in SQL. Multi-head attention, LayerNorm, sampling. Matmul hijacks pgvector's index operators. The KV cache is a table.

Reflexive Prediction Markets

Markets as levers, not mirrors

Ostensible Tyranny in Categorization

Their NAND is your upside.

When You Laugh, Don’t Stutter

Moore is faster than Darwin.

Latency Numbers You Should Know in 2026

InfiniBand ping pong and thunderbolt roundtrips

The End of Obfuscation

Soon public DATABASE_URLs won't be a thing anymore.

Solving GPS Trilateration in SQL

Think twice before going camping.

Know thy Rabbit Hole

If you're gonna go, go boldly.

Center's Pivot & The Crystal Merchant

Things I learned build a web3 infra company.

"No one told you where to run"

Well that's your opinion

Speed is Quality

Do you want this done correctly or quickly? Yes.

Degrees of Freedom

Where to fly the plane, or how to fly the plane?

Compute Futures Markets

Thinking about compute commodity futures markets.

Awkward until undeniable.

Incredibly Perfect

We only decorate words after they stop protecting us.

The Lulz Motive

When you're making something for yourself, you don't need a users table

The Man, The Machine, and The Door

Fusing identity and work makes you protect your ego instead of improving your creation.

Great Financial Primitives with Marketing Problems

I think Credit Default Swaps and Assassination Markets are under-explored idea spaces.

The Day You Became A Better Writer

Reposting this because the original page is down

Ambition Mismatch

Dante has nothing on this.

In a world with infinite opportunity, knowing what you're not is a superpower

Why sometimes "just don't quit" is the fastest path to failure.

The Hidden Danger in Low-Information Goals & Statements

Here's why "I want to make the world a better place" sounds good but only for 5 seconds.

Local/Global Optimization and It's Nonobvious Impact on Human Relationships and Life

Good intentions and continual short term thinking gets you stuck in the waiting place.

A New Perspective on Risk

Identify as many risks as you can and then decide which you won't hedge.

Overthinking Can Lead to the Same Outcomes as Not Thinking At All

Is there really a difference between overthinking and not thinking in the first place?

Builder Identity Politics

Is there a word for a builder who doesn't ship?

Just Go Back to Bed: Short-Term Applications of the Efficient Market Hypothesis

Where's the joke about the economist who's walking down the street

"Omar, we bill hourly." My Silicon Valley Story, Part 1.

Reflections on going west and taking a chance.

Competition from other startups is usually just a distraction.

Be Direct. Have the Hard Conversation. Don't Waste Time.

Programming Languages

I'm not talking about the one you use to write code.

The Way To Do the Thing is To Do The Thing

Highlighting some key differences between South Carolina and /dev/null

ActiveStorage::Attachment & Ransack

Solving Define a ransackable_attributes class method in your ActiveStorage::Attachment

Going in Circles Just to Realize You're Already There

You keep spinning in circles until you realize you were already there.

HY Credit Trader

High Yield Credit sounded so venerable.

Playing Your Own Game

The best version of your own story is the most interesting thing you can share with the world.

Taking something from an idea to actually shipped feels so good.

Nerd-sniping might be one of the best ways to learn something.

Announcing Center's Seed Round

Center has raised an $11M seed round led by Thrive Capital and Founders Fund.

Technical Co-founders' Guide to Equity Negotiations

How to think about equity between co-founders.

Nesting Fixtures in Ethereum-Waffle

Faster test suites lead to better smart contracts.

Values: Outrage Means You're Doing it Right

When the outrage mob comes knocking, Claude Shannon smiles down on you.

RIP David Swensen

David Swensen and University Endowments.

28 Lines of Code Will Forever Change Lending

Why flash loans are important.

Publishing Software for Hackers Who Write

The publishing platform that now hosts this site.

What's Next: EIR at Paradigm

I'm joining Paradigm as an EIR for the next 6 months.

Amazon Managed Blockchain + Web3.py Provider

Web3.py HTTP and Websocket Providers for Amazon Managed Blockchain

Feedback and Social Progress

Everybody knows feedback can be hard. Here's why.

Run Multistep Workflows with react-use-workflow

Lightweight framework for running multistep workflows.

Accountable: Succinct Ruby Ledger Engine

Ruby ledger engine I've been thinking about.

On Randomness and Hashing Functions

Something I believe that not many others do.

What Impedes Distributed Ledger Technology?

Maybe the actual reason is more prosaic than we thought.

"We Didn't Do Anything Wrong, But Somehow, We Lost"

You were saying something about.. best intentions?

Some things I think I've figured out.

Postgres Views in Rails

Simple pattern for accessing views in Rails.

Blockchain & Back-Office Technologies

Why blockchain is exciting.

Split Collections in Jekyll

Jekyll Generator to split up collections.

Productive Redux

A simple framework to be more productive with Redux and Typescript.

How to Level Up and Write Better Code

Guaranteed way to get better at writing code.

Four-Handed Clock

Why would someone make a clock with four hands?

Loose Notes on Conversational Frameworks

What we still might need to figure out to pass the Turing Test.

Engineering Recruiting Lessons Learned

Everything I learned about eng recruiting in 2018.

Ruby Keyword Arguments and Defaults

Fun with shorthand method signatures in Ruby.

Parsing Meta Blocks using Python's dataclass

A powerful construct to parse class Meta blocks.

Convert Markdown to Slack Formatting

Here's a small pandoc extension to convert Markdown to Slack formatting.

Wells & Fidelity: Dealing with Culture Problems

Difficult problems can be easy to solve if you catch them early enough.

Joining Coinbase

I'm joining Coinbase as part of the Earn.com acquisition.

Shortcut to Creating a New Post in Jekyll

A quick shortcut to make a new post in Jekyll.

Upgrade: Online Lending and Blockchain

An interesting use case of a blockchain can be used in a business.

Anonymous Publishing

We need a way for authors to share work without huge reputational risk.

Solving the NYT Crossword with a SQL Query

Fun with SAT Solvers, SQL, and the NY Times Crossword.

Mutations: A Python Package for Business Logic

Introducing a Python Package for handling business logic in web apps.

Recurse Center Return Statement

Reflecting on my time at the Recurse Center.

Techniques for Parametric Cybersecurity Insurance

Sixteen Books & Papers

Assorted books / papers I've enjoyed reading over the past weeks.

Optimistic Nihilism

We counter existential dread with optimistic nihilism.

Traversing Graphs and Finding Cats

My solution to one of Facebook's early engineering challenges.

Joining the Recurse Center

I'm joining the Recurse Center's Fall batch in New York City.

Disabling Command+T and the Productivity Tax

How remapping Command+T on my mac helped me focus on what's important.

You might have heard the old joke about two hikers getting ready for a walk into the woods.

Helpful Design Resources

A few helpful design principles I've learned over the years.

Nootrobox on Shark Tank

You came in and gave us sugar cubes!

LendingHome's Technology Stack

Learn about the stack we've used to deliver over $750M in investments.

We All Press the Same Upload Button

A good reminder that we all use relatively similar tools.

Practical Guide to PostgreSQL Optimizations

A guide to tweaking one of the most popular databases.

Changing and Augmenting Habits

Thinking about mobile apps that direct you to something better instead of reminding you what not to do.

How Jeff Bezos Thinks About Failure

We're working on much bigger failures right now. And I'm not kidding.

Ideas: Automatic Thoughts, Cybersecurity Insurance, and Books

Three things I've been thinking about recently.

New Technologies and Their Megapolitical Consequences

Room for Improvement.

Conflating Focus With Intensity

I used to think these two things were the same.

Lessons from Marathon Training

If a person trained for a marathon but didn't write about it on the internet, did they ever train?

Four Kinds of Luck

Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty

The Link Between Mindfulness and Systems Thinking

It feels like the left and right hemispheres of my brain are becoming great waltz partners.

The Work We Do - Debt and Equity

It's indeed possible to do incredible work while also iterating rapidly.

Joining LendingHome

I'm joining LendingHome to work on the retail investing platform! Some thoughts on the decision and space.

Why I'm excited about chat interfaces

Focusing on things you can control

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Tips on Moving Data from PostgreSQL to Vertica

Migrating Data to a Columnar Database

Five Ways to Reach Near-Light-Speed Travel

Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life

Tweetable: A plugin to make any text easily tweetable

The “Understanding Your Market” Multiplier

Better late than never: when the technical cofounder begins to understand the value of a non-technical cofounder.

Staying Focused at 150 mph

As long as you remain in control of what you're doing, you'll be A-O-K.

Thin Python Cache Decorator

That great feeling with python decorators start to make intuitive sense.

This seems interesting.

Custom Firefox Profile in Selenium RC2

It took me a lot longer than I'd like to admit to figure this one out.

Django - Restrict View Access by Group Membership

Predicting Earnings via Satellite Imagery

Top-Down Metrics

Entrepreneurship Advice

Balancing "Make Something People Want" and "Scratch the Itch"

Kuitman - Thru You

Life, Value, and the Paradoxes of Risk

If pure self–seeking is so pervasive, it’s because those who seek only for themselves imagine that they are the whole world.

Ben Franklin's Insight

"...self-deprecating humor, unpretentious demeanor, and unaggressive style in conversation"

FratMusic.com in the Cav Daily

Didn't rush for a frat, started a frat music website instead.

Helpful Advice On Setting Goals

First, you must decide exactly what it is you want to accomplish. Most people never do that in their entire lives.

The world you desired can be won

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark