I design them. I painstakingly write the code to create them. I train them — sometimes for weeks — with all the data I’ve managed to gather. I start using them, and see that they have learned so much so well. I see that they are sometimes better than me at classifying stuff I throw at them. I also see that they often make the same mistakes that I do. I am proud of them!

But then, after a few good days, my boss comes in and tells me that they are not necessary any more. …

If you are having a hard time deciding which language you should learn next, I suggest you try doing what many seasoned language learners do: listen to songs in several languages, and pick the language with the most beautiful songs. In my opinion, this is actually a great approach to picking a language because you get to not only listen to the language, but also get a glimpse of the culture that surrounds it.

Lately, I’ve been on various international chat rooms asking people what their favorite songs are in their native languages. …

Ever moved to a large city where no one knew you? Do you have any idea what it feels like to be alone, neglected, and invisible among millions? Well, that’s what it feels like when you create a new account on Medium. When you write a new story, no one’s going to care. In fact, there’s a good chance that no one’s going to see it at all. There are too many other people like you, uncared-for, enthusiastic and desperate for attention. …

When people suffer from a disorder called attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD for short, they find it impossible to focus on anything for more than a few minutes. Thanks to the Internet, a lot of us these days experience symptoms of this disorder. Do you find yourself constantly refreshing your favorite social network’s home page, be it Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook, hoping to find new posts and pictures? Do you feel lost and restless when your social network is temporarily down for maintenance? Do you find it really hard to read long comments or posts, or watch videos that are…

By the end of this century, homo sapiens — homo sapiens sapiens, to be more precise — will almost certainly become a species that is not confined to a single planet. In other words, humans are going to inhabit both Earth and Mars. But what would life be like on a desert planet whose air is unbreathable, and whose gravity is less than half that of Earth. Right now, no one knows the exact answer to that question. Nevertheless, one can make a few semi-educated guesses.

Before I talk about life on Mars, however, there’s one little thing that I…

There’s really no arguing that the latest iPhone looks far better than every single Android phone available in the market today. I think most Android users will also agree with me when I say iPhones usually perform slightly better than Android phones. I mean, there’s something very smooth and lively about Apple user interfaces.

Nevertheless, I will always prefer a moderately priced Android phone over an iPhone. Here are my 4 reasons:

• When I connect my Android phone to a computer, it behaves just like a USB stick. …

If I were to show a random English name to you, I’m sure you can accurately tell if it belongs to a man or a woman. How do you do it? Do you consciously look for any specific patterns in the name? I don’t think so.

Recently, I had to write some client-side code that can automatically fill the gender field of a registration form — with moderate accuracy. At first, I thought I would search for patterns in the last three or four characters of the name. For example, names ending with -ine or -lla are almost always female…