Press

Please find below a fairly exhaustive list of mentions of me on the internet. This list includes blog posts and interviews of me on behalf of current/former employers, links to videos/decks of talks I gave (mostly pre-COVID), some organic media coverage of various hacks / games and a select list of blog posts I’ve written in the past (mostly original (but hobbyist) math proofs with some fun deep dives with code). Note, it doesn’t appear that there’s much from before the 2020s so most of this is also fairly recent, at least at the time of writing.

High Scale Software, Architecture & Patents

  1. AWS Industries (2026-07): Blazing a Trail — How Peloton Rebuilt the SDLC for the Agentic Era with Amazon Bedrock (aws.amazon.com) AWS write-up of internal AI agent platforms my org maintains at Peloton, I played a very big role (along with my colleague Tom Mysliwiec) in conception, design and implementation. The article covers early deployment results and impact we saw shortly after rollout (it went “viral” internally).
  2. AWS Industries (2026-07): How Peloton Engineers the World’s Largest Live Fitness Events on AWS (aws.amazon.com) AWS case study on Peloton’s peak event concurrency: I played a major role in conceiving, rallying organizational support for, and directly implementing many of the core platform ideas featured here.
  3. TechTarget (2026-07): Peloton’s engineering team makes the case for test in production (techtarget.com). Independent trade-press feature interview on site reliability engineering: I was interviewed (along with my colleague and current direct report Alex Niderberg) on replacing dedicated performance environments with testing in production and designing resilient systems at scale.
  4. The Clip Out (2026-07): Peloton Behind the Scenes Engineering (theclipout.com) Independent podcast/press coverage detailing our team’s 30–40% infrastructure cost reduction and “information furnace” platform model. (Likely picked up from TechTarget’s coverage)
  5. Pelobuddy (2026-07): How Peloton’s Engineers Keep Turkey Burn From Crashing (pelobuddy.com) Community press independently covering production testing strategies for high-scale live classes, similarly, likely picked up from TechTarget’s coverage.
  6. USPTO Patent Application 2025⁄0185088 (Peloton) (2025-06) — patents.google.com I’m a co-inventor on a patent filing for cloud-based fallback connectivity and peripheral device integration across connected fitness hardware, I specifically conceived of and implemented the gRPC based connection/alignment mechanism between peripheral and device. Sidebar: the service we wrote to support this currently powers “High Fives”, a very high scale and well loved Member feature for in-class (and now, out of class) interaction across Peloton’s experience.

Select (Recently) Peloton Features Shipped (Press Coverage)

Below are some more recent (~2025, mostly) member-facing features I directly built and shipped at Peloton, broken out by feature and then by outlet. Some of these features are currently being used every day by millions of Peloton’s Members across the world.

Club Peloton (loyalty & recognition program)

I was approached by my manager and mentor (the current CTO of Peloton) to determine just how hard it would be to implement a feature of this nature. I managed to turn around a PoC in about an hour, which then morphed into this feature, a well loved and high impact way for our Members to be recognized within Peloton.

  1. Pelobuddy (2025-10): Details on “Club Peloton” - Peloton’s New Loyalty & Reward System (pelobuddy.com) Independent launch coverage breaking down the points, levels, and rewards structure at rollout.
  2. The Clip Out (2025-10): Community Features — Teams, Club Peloton, and More (theclipout.com) A second independent outlet’s launch-week explainer of Club Peloton and how it fits alongside Teams as a retention feature.
  3. T3 (2025-10): Is Club Peloton worth it? Rewards, perks and what the new system really means for members (t3.com) Mainstream consumer-tech coverage (also syndicated to Yahoo Lifestyle) of the launch, assessing the tier structure and what it signals about Peloton’s retention strategy.
  4. Athletech News (2025-11): Peloton’s Strong Quarter Marred by Another Equipment Recall (athletechnews.com) Fitness-industry trade coverage of Peloton’s earnings call reporting more than 500,000 members had joined Club Peloton within its first month, with CEO Peter Stern citing it and Teams engagement (+50%) as retention drivers.
  5. The Clip Out (2026-05): Peloton Software Features Driving Serious Member Loyalty (theclipout.com) Follow-up coverage citing CEO Peter Stern’s Q2 FY2026 earnings call, where he reported 24% of active members had engaged with Club Peloton since launch, beating the company’s internal 20% target.

Garmin / Fitbit Integration

I partnered with my manager and mentor (the current CTO of Peloton) to build our first external wearable integration (Garmin). This R&D experiment then expanded into a core platform capability now powering multi-directional integrations across Garmin, Fitbit, Strava, and Apple Health.

  1. Pelobuddy (2025-09, updated 2026-03): Peloton x Garmin Connect Integration (First Look) (pelobuddy.com) Independent first-look coverage of the initial Garmin Connect integration at its October 2025 launch alongside Peloton IQ, later updated to cover the two-way sync expansion.
  2. The Clip Out (2025-09): Garmin Peloton Integration Streamlines Tracking (theclipout.com) A second independent outlet’s coverage of the same initial integration, walking through setup and the one-way sync limitations at launch.
  3. Athletech News (2025-10): Peloton Signals New Era With AI Fitness Coaching, Equipment Overhaul (athletechnews.com) Fitness-industry trade coverage of the Peloton IQ launch naming the Garmin, Fitbit, and Apple Health integrations as core to the new AI coaching system.
  4. TechRadar (2026-03): Garmin and Peloton devices now properly sync in both directions (techradar.com) Major mainstream tech-press coverage (also syndicated via Inkl) of the two-way sync milestone, detailing which activity types and stats are covered.
  5. Notebookcheck (2026-03): Garmin Connect opens up slightly for improved workout management (notebookcheck.net) International tech-news coverage of the same two-way sync update, framed from the Garmin ecosystem side.

Victory Lap (year-in-review)

Upon request from the current CMO of Peloton, and indication from my partner (Julianna Garreffa) that a “Year in Review” would be “very cool”, I set out to drive and ship this feature on a very tight timeline (~3 weeks, this was before Opus 4.5 became a thing). I managed to convince a high agency PM (Pat Courtney) and together we were able to rally the org, delivering a widely praised, high-visibility member campaign on a hyper-compressed timeline.

  1. Pelobuddy (2025-12): Peloton’s Year In Review For 2025 (“The Victory Lap”) Is Now Available (pelobuddy.com) Independent coverage of that year’s rollout, walking through the new location in the app, the daily-updating stats, and how to generate a shareable recap image. Note: This product received widespread coverage and Member love on rollout, primarily across Reddit, Facebook, Instagram.

Wordle Reverse Engineering & Secondary Press Coverage

Back when Wordle was everywhere, I accidentally played a day’s puzzle without my partner, Julianna. She was not pleased! As an olive branch, I reverse-engineered the client-side game logic and built “Wordle Time Machine.” By monkey-patching JavaScript’s Date object, I exposed the full 2,315-word solution array (including “Day 0”), allowing anyone to play any past or future game by calendar date. Turns out this was something people really wanted: I casually tweeted about it which triggered an organic wave of coverage across (medium)stream tech press.

  1. Original Post: Reverse Engineering Wordle (2022-01) (mottaquikarim.github.io) The core technical post dissecting Wordle’s client-side JavaScript bundle, extracting the array of 2,315 solutions, and mapping date offset logic back to June 19, 2021. It’s a technical but fun read, if I do say so myself.
  2. Wordle Time Machine Application (2022-01) (mottaquikarim.github.io) The (still!) functional tool built on top of the teardown: an interactive web application allowing users to play past or future Wordle puzzles by calendar date.
  3. Nerdschalk (2022-01): Wordle Unlimited Games (nerdschalk.com) Feature article crediting the reverse-engineering of all 2,315 stock words, citing the “Day 0” archive, and embedding my original launch tweet, the first of four independent outlets to cover this unprompted.
  4. Nerdschalk (2022-02): 6 Ways to Play Old Wordle Puzzles (nerdschalk.com) Follow-up step-by-step consumer guide recommending Wordle Time Machine as a primary archive resource.
  5. TwoAverageGamers (2022-04): How to Play Old Wordle Puzzles (twoaveragegamers.com) Media feature highlighting the “Unofficial Wordle Time Machine by Taq Karim.”
  6. Alphr (2022-07): How to Play Old Wordle Games (alphr.com) Tech guide recommending the archive as a top method for playing past puzzles, a third independent outlet, five months after launch, meaning durable interest rather than a one-day spike.

Other Consumer Games & Products

  1. Freestyle (Ongoing) (playfreestyle.co) Daily rhyming word puzzle designed and built end-to-end (for Julianna! Who came up with the idea), powered by a custom, multi-tier dynamic phonetic-matching lookup engine that I implemented after crawling millions of pages of words.
  2. Product Hunt Launch: Freestyle (2024-01) (producthunt.com) Co-launched with Julianna, initially I was disappointed by the reaction but having looked at it again: 107 points, #26 day rank, 78 followers, with unsolicited praise in the comments from unaffiliated makers, one noting they’d use it to practice rhyme in copywriting, another describing spending 30 minutes playing it one morning. Pretty cool!
  1. TrendHunter (2024-01): Daily Word Games — Make as Many Rhymes as Possible with ‘Freestyle’ (trendhunter.com) Independent editorial trend write-up (not a submission-based directory) by a named author, analyzing Freestyle’s mechanics, community design, and market positioning, this was real press, from someone unaffiliated with me/the game who chose to write about it. Also neat!
  2. Web Game Dev Newsletter, Issue #030 (2026-03) (buttondown.com) Listed in the “Games” section alongside other notable indie web releases of the month, editorial curation by a niche but respected gamedev newsletter.
  3. Word-game aggregator listings, unsubmitted (Ongoing) — The Dles (dles.aukspot.com), a widely used curated index of 750+ daily games where Freestyle sits in the Words category next to NYT Wordle and Connections, plus likewordle.com, guessdle.app, playlin.io, and daily-games.app. None of these were submitted by me, organic discovery and indexing by third-party curators, a small but real signal of reach in the “Wordle-alike” ecosystem.

Systems Writing, Language Cores & Applied Math

I like to hack at things or think about math for fun. I’ll usually write up the results that are interesting enough to share, some of the cooler findings are listed below.

  1. The Semiprime Sandwich (2022-11) (mottaquikarim.github.io) Number theory research write-up and proof establishing that the longest chain of consecutive distinct semiprimes is exactly 3. Inspired by a convo with my buddy Chai Medicherla about birthdays and aging in our 30s.
  2. Hacking the COVID Appointment Queue (2021-02) (mottaquikarim.github.io) Reverse-engineering teardown of scheduling portal queue logic, polling intervals, and automated booking tokens to secure appointments for my mother-in-law and mother, both who were in the “Group 1” allocation of individuals at high risk from COVID. Fun story: while I did not make this available broadly for fear of misuse, I did share with someone on twitter who’s mother had Asthma and with my approach, he was able to secure an appointment for her to get the jab as well. Gg.
  3. You might not be using json.Decoder correctly in golang (2021-01) (mottaquikarim.github.io) I thought I found a bug in the go stdlib! Alas, it was not a bug, just a weird behavior. I know because I obsessed over this a bit and read through reams of the golang stdlib and did a bunch of systems benchmarking exercises, evaluating streamed JSON decoding correctness and memory allocations in Go.
  4. esquerydsl Open Source Go Library (2020-12) (github.com) Go query builder library for constructing type-safe Elasticsearch Query DSLs (38 stars, 16 forks). I was doing some elasticsearch related work at Oracle at the time and got annoyed by the lack of such a lib, so I wrote one.
  5. Perl Core AUTHORS Repository Record (2013-03) (github.com) Look ma, I’m a Perl contributor! This is the canonical contributor record (line 1027) in the official Perl 5 repository history, shipping continuously since Perl 5.18.0, permanent credit in one of the most widely used programming language runtimes in the world (…that I contributed some tests and documentation)
  6. Perl Core Patch Ticket #12828 (2013-03) (github.com) Primary patch ticket carrying test-suite conversions created during the 2013 NY Perl Hackathon.
  7. Hacking Python with Spells from Harry Potter (2021-03) (mottaquikarim.github.io) CPython grammar metaprogramming experiment aliasing key language keywords (accio, lumos, avadakedavra) to built-in operators (companion PR: python/cpython#24947). Not super significant, but a cute idea and I’m glad I tried this (I’m fun at parties, this is partially why!)
  8. Extending Python’s Builtin C Modules (2021-03) (mottaquikarim.github.io) Systems teardown covering C-extension APIs, memory allocation, and module compilation for Python. I thought I found a bug in the python stdlib. Again, no cigar, but learned a ton!
  9. A Hack for Transferring Cross-Domain localStorage Data (2022-02) (mottaquikarim.github.io) Frontend security post outlining an iframe messaging vector to synchronize client state across domain boundaries. PSA: if you paste data:text/html,<html contenteditable> into the Chrome URL bar, you get a simple scratch pad for notes. I was looking for a way to save the notes.
  10. Novel Algorithm for Generating Pythagorean Triples (2022-11) (mottaquikarim.github.io) Applied math write-up introducing a parameterized method for generating Pythagorean triples via mental arithmetic patterns. I doubt this is actually novel (or put another way, significant). But, it certainly was a fun exercise!
  11. Proving the Squaring Numbers Ending in 5 Trick (2022-11) (mottaquikarim.github.io) Know the trick for squaring numbers ending in -5 super quick? Every wonder why it works? Fret no more, Dear Reader, because I had a similar thought years ago, proved why it works and then wrote about it.

Keynotes, Public Speaking & Academia

Pre-pandemic, I did an entire talk circuit about my work at PlaceExchange, using AWS Lambda functions to build and deploy (at scale) an ad auction platform for serving programmatic ads to digital billboards and signage. I’ve also had a very successful (but now paused) second career as a teacher and professor.

  1. AWS re:Invent 2019 (SVS209-S) Video (2019-12) (youtube.com) Recorded main-stage presentation presenting serverless programmatic auction platforms managing global edge devices at Place Exchange.
  2. AWS re:Invent 2019 (SVS209-S) Presentation Deck (2019-12) (awsstatic.com) Official AWS presentation slides on high-throughput serverless architectures.
  3. Speaker Deck (2019-12): Take it to the LIMIT! Lessons Learned After 2 Years of Serverless in Production (speakerdeck.com) Slide deck detailing real-world architectural failures, limits, and patterns in high-volume serverless environments.
  4. DevOpsDays Des Moines Speaker Profile (2020-05) (devopsdays.org) Speaker profile for enterprise deployment and system operations talks.
  5. DevOpsDays Hartford Speaker Profile (2019-10) (devopsdays.org) Speaker profile on scaling continuous delivery and serverless infrastructure.
  6. Baruch College (CUNY) Faculty Profile (Ongoing) (baruch.cuny.edu) Official academic profile as Adjunct Lecturer in the Paul H. Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics.
  7. General Assembly Front-End Web Development Materials (2015–2020) (github.com) Open curriculum, starter kits, and lecture code repositories for web development immersive tracks.
  8. RateMyProfessors (Baruch CIS) (2020–2022) (ratemyprofessors.com) Independent student review profile: 4.8 / 5.0 across 44 reviews, 98% Would Take Again, turns out people liked my professing!