User Profile

Machine learning involves the development and evaluation of algorithms that enable a computer to extract (or learn) functions from a dataset (sets of examples).

— Deep Learning by John D. Kelleher (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series) (Page 6)

Overall, the cognitive charge of a function should be minimal. No one wants to face a wall of text featuring multiple layers of indentations.

— Learn Go with Pocket-Sized Projects by Aliénor Latour, Donia Chaiehloudj, Pascal Bertrand

Dortmunder had learned patience at great cost. The trial and error of life among human beings had taught him that whenever a bunch of them began to jump up and down and shout at cross-purposes, the only thing a sane man could do was sit back and let them sort it out for themselves. No matter how long it took. The alternative was to try to attract their attention, either with explanations of the misunderstanding or with a return to the original topic of conversation, and to make that attempt meant that sooner or later you too would be jumping up and down and shouting at cross-purposes. Patience, patience; at the very worst, they would finally wear themselves out.

— Bank shot by Donald E. Westlake (Page 89)

He didn’t ask the question, and that was strangely more annoying than if he had. I said, “I lost the faith.” “Like a priest?” “Something like that. Not exactly, because it’s not rare for a cop to lose the faith and go on being a cop. He may never have had it in the first place. What it amounted to was that I found out I didn’t want to be a cop anymore.” Or a husband, or a father. Or a productive member of society. “All the corruption in the department? That sort of thing?” “No, no.” The corruption had never bothered me. I would have found it hard to support a family without it.

— The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block (Matthew Scudder (#1)) (Page 15)

About the only way anybody could get hurt really badly around here was by winning the lottery, which occasionally happened to some poor bastard, who was usually, a year later, either dead or in jail or rehab or exile. McWhitney did not play the lottery.

— Dirty Money by Richard Stark (Page 95)

While they waited for their food, Parker said, “This whole thing is the wrong side of the street for you.” Sandra grimaced. “I don’t think of it like that,” she said. “What I think, there’s no sides to the street because there is no street.” “What is there?” She studied him, trying to decide how much to tell him, moving her fork back and forth on the table with her left hand. Then she shrugged, and left the fork alone, and said, “I figured it out when I was a little girl, what my idea of the world is.” “What’s that?” “A frozen lake,” she said. “Bigger than you can see the end of. Every day, I get up, I gotta move a little more along the lake. I gotta be very careful and very wary, because I don’t know where the ice is too thin. I gotta listen and watch.”

— Dirty Money by Richard Stark (Page 61 - 62)

“When I was in Massachusetts last week,” he said, “they were talking about something called leaf peeping.” Even more surprised, she said, “Leaf peeping? Oh, that’s because the fall colors change on the trees.” “That’s it.” “People go to New England just to see the colors on the trees.” She considered. “They call them leaf peepers?” “That’s what I heard.” She looked out the kitchen window toward the lake. Most of the trees around here were evergreens, but there were some that changed color in the fall; down here, that wouldn’t be for another month, and not as showy as New England. “It makes them sound silly,” she said. “Leaf peepers. You make a whole trip to look at leaves. I guess it is silly, really.”

— Dirty Money by Richard Stark (Page 22 - 23)

“I hate it when somebody’s plausible,” Sandra said. “Everything fits together like Legos. Life doesn’t do that.”

— Dirty Money by Richard Stark (Page 14)

Some women are asked, “Are you a Betty or a Veronica?” I think the better, more revealing question is, “Are you a Parker or a Dortmunder?”

— Dirty Money by Richard Stark

They were driving to Pooley from Barracks K because some old coot had reported mislaying his weapon, a handgun. Both troopers understood the citizens’ right to bear arms and all that, but both sincerely believed the world would be a safer place if idiots didn’t own guns. They could understand how a person at almost any age could mislay their car keys or watch, but to lose your piece? That was just the sort of individual, in their opinion, who shouldn’t be armed in the first place.

— Ask the Parrot by Richard Stark (Page 159)

Why did I think I could control him? Tom thought, remembering the sight of the man coming up that hill. Because he was on the run? That didn’t make him somebody that could be controlled, that made him somebody that could never be controlled.

— Ask the Parrot by Richard Stark (Page 145)

Jane loved to read. Reading invariably took her out of the world she lived in, out of this glassed-in porch with its changing views of the seasons, and off to some other world with other views, other people, other seasons. Invariably; but not today. Jane tended to buy best sellers, but only after they came out in paperback, so the excited buzz that had greeted the book’s initial appearance had cooled and she could see the story for itself, with its insights and its failings. She was a forgiving reader, even when she was offered sequences that didn’t entirely make sense; after all, now and again the sequence of actual life didn’t make sense, either, did it?

— Ask the Parrot by Richard Stark (Page 142)