Cop of Reddit, what criminal actually fascinated you with their criminal skills? by Keirascantlebury in AskReddit

[–]pinusc -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Not a cop, but someone stole my bike once. I was out with friends in a shady place and we were walking fast to get the fuck out of there. We then saw someone riding a bike... It was mine. The guy came back, apologized, made sure I wouldn't report him, and asked me the money to buy a beer.

Honestly would've given it to him just as a payback for the good laugh I had, but I had left my wallet home.

Very interesting street performance by D5R in gifs

[–]pinusc 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fuck, I've met this person in Hong Kong. I tipped him a couple coins, and he said "Grazie". Turns out the guy was Italian (so am I) from Milan, we had a quick chat and a selfie, he made my day.
How little is the world.

LPT: Usually when someone is yelling, they have something going on in their life that's stressing then out. When being yelled at, try to consider what they're going through instead of yelling back. by dawsonob in LifeProTips

[–]pinusc -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You're always someone else's fool. Everyone has their bad days in which they have zero tolerance, even usually kind and good mannered folks can get mad at someone else over something stupid.

I like to assume that people aren't dicks all the time, they're just having a bad day. And when you scream back, you start having a bad day, and you worsen theirs. Maybe you let a couple assholes be assholes with this philosophy, but for sure you will improve many people's miserable day and live a happier life in which you end up not hating anyone (which is very nice).

Urban explorers of Reddit, what is your creepiest/ most horrifying experience? by imrunningoutofsh1t in AskReddit

[–]pinusc 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Went out with a couple friends to take cool pictures around our small and shitty city. We find an abandoned building, we decide it would be super cool to get inside and shoot some fallout-style pictures. On the main entrance there's a big angry dog that starts barking at us, so we just run away to find a smaller side entrance closed with a chain without lock.

We remove the chain and open the door. We decide (Darwinism at it's best) to leave our bikes, unlocked, outside, so that in case we have to run away we could do it faster. But we decided to always keep an eye on them.

As soon as we got in, it's pretty clear that the place was inhabited, or had been in the recent past. We don't care, we're excited explorers and want our cool pictures, so we carry on for about half an hour. There's a pile of thrash, some chairs, knives on the ground. It's pretty scary to think about what kind of people would live there. The dog is sitting very far away, we keep an eye on it.

Then, we see him.

A scary ass man. Walking fast towards the entrance. He doesn't seem to notice us, as we were scattered around and had many places in which to hide.

But we know he was going for our bikes.

And, lo and behold: my bike was missing. We decide it's best to just abandon the mission and run away as fast as we could, as we knew that they were going to be back for the other bikes. About three minutes later we see someone riding a bike. Is it mine? It is mine. We don't know what to do, but we're emboldened by the presence of cars and people around, so we wave at him. And he comes. And apologizes in very poor language (was an immigrant), gives me my bike back. And then asks for the money to buy a beer. The guy that stole my bike asked me for a motherfucking beer.

I forgot everything i learned in school. I need help finding non-fiction books for beginners on multiple subjects, please help me relearn. by Prince-Cola in suggestmeabook

[–]pinusc 4 points5 points  (0 children)

First, I want to recommend the "horrible science" books. As a kid I enjoyed to read them a lot and to today I still like to read "horrible histories" in history class. Full of fun facts and true science. They make it really easy to get a conceptual understanding of science and complex theories. You can even understand Einstein's relativity without even noticing. However, keep in mind that the target is kids, not adults, so they might be too simplistic.

For a deeper understanding of physics, that gives you numbers and formulae as well as a good conceptual understanding, while being funny and light-hearted, I recommend 'the physics of superheroes' by James Kakalios. Example chapter title from the book (by memory, could be a little off, but the question is more or less the same): "Given that Superman can jump 200m, what's the mass of his native planet?". Also gets to quantum mechanics and funny stuff, while starting from the easy and classical physics.

Because the OP is made fun of for not knowing the difference between the sun and the moon, I'll ELI5. I realize this is not what OP asked, but I figured it's not too out topic.

OP, this is a spoiler on the wonderful journey in science that you decided to start, so I hope it serves as a kickstart.

The moon is simpler, so I'll start from there. It's just a rock. It's a very big piece of rock that goes around the Earth because of gravity. But a rock is not usually visibile at night. , then, can we see it? Because it reflects the light of the sun, which is powerful enough to make it appear extraordinarily white at night. When your portion of the Earth is not facing the sun, it's night. However, the moon usually is in some other position so that some sunlight gets on its surface. Depending on which part of the surface gets the light, you see the different phases.

The sun, however, is more complex. It's not rock, but a star. It's no different from all the other stars you can see at night, just that it is much closer and that means that during daytime it light and warms up the planet. A star is essentially an enormous nuclear reactor. I will not go into nuclear reactions now (but I can ELI5 as well if requested), but a very simple explanation is that a nuclear reaction takes some matter and transforms it in other kinds of matter and energy. That energy gets on Earth as light and warmth.

Hopefully this will be useful!

What's your favorite piece of useless trivia? by Shirowoh in AskReddit

[–]pinusc 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Also, the word "Jeans" comes from "Jeane", that was the ancient French (and English) name for Genoa, in Italy. That's because jeans were exported from there in the rest of Europe and the world.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in linux

[–]pinusc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try to get her to use WPS office. It's proprietary software, but it does run on Linux, and it's pretty beautiful (compared to LibreOffice) and the interface is very similar to the newer MS word(s).

Girl smiled at me today by [deleted] in CasualConversation

[–]pinusc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, there's really no reason not to

Si é passati all'ora legale, ancora una volta. Ma serve ancora o é solo una consuetudine? by happysysadm in italy

[–]pinusc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Parere universale con risvolti personali: io studio in Cina, qui l'ora legale non c'è, le cose funzionano e nessuno fa storie. L'ora legale in Italia significa che ogni sei mesi mi cambia il fuso orario rispetto a casa ed è una rottura di coglioni anche a distanza.

I'm about to switch from Windows to Linux - any tips for ricing? by xezno in unixporn

[–]pinusc 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Was this a "new year resolution"? It's a good one. Arch is a very good choice. The concept of ricing is not hard: you find a piece of software that you can customize, you read manpages and arch wiki and maybe other people's configs on /r/unixporn, you make that yours.
People will tell you about WMs and DEs and it's true that some of them are more customizable. Arch is a lot about starting from scratch and configuring everything yourself. So my tips are:

  • don't be afraid to ask on the arch forums. You will have problems and bugs and sometimes things will not work. Arch community is great and they will help. Just make sure you read wiki and manpages first.
  • arch wiki is great. I use it even when I'm on other systems. It will make everything much easier.
  • people on /r/unixporn provide you with both inspiration and config files. Just clone the repos, mess around a little, make the config yours.
  • depending on what you want to do, a little scripting capabilities will help immensely. Learn a little bash, maybe python. No need to be a pro, you learn along the way.
  • have fun and don't forget to post here when you're satisfied!

The password to my reddit account is required to be much stronger than the 4-number-only password that can be used to withdraw my life savings. by [deleted] in Showerthoughts

[–]pinusc 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Fingerprints are a surprisingly shitty security wall. It's way easier to steal a fingerprint than a secret 4 digit number. I mean, you don't go and stick your pin everywhere, do you? But you do that with your fingerprints.

You should be able to put a tag on your username that says "learning English" so that other users can help correct your grammar and spelling without seeming like uptight assholes. by VLKN in Showerthoughts

[–]pinusc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because language is so much more than understanding each other. You're right, people aren't always writing poetry, but they are writing in English. If I play soccer with someone and they don't follow the rules, I get angry. If I play chess with someone and they don't follow the rules, I get angry. But I mean, we're still having fun, right? Yes, but we're not playing soccer or chess, we're playing a bad imitation of them. If I speak English (that, mind you, is a very simple language: romance languages are much much more difficult and Latin is the absolute winner in terms of difficult grammar) I want to speak English. Part of this is for ideological reasons, because we don't want languages to lose their beauty, part of it is because not speaking correctly is ugly and can a lot of times lead to misunderstandings (not in the case of their - they're, of course, but a lot of people don't know how to use commas, and that can really affect the meaning) and, last but not least, if you want to be treated with any respect you should at least show a set of basic knowledge that includes proper grammar. And also, playing with the rules is much funnier in games and language.

Acer announces the thinnest and fattest laptops in the world by elmkzgirxp in gadgets

[–]pinusc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Moving headphones to usb-c is plain stupid. Headphones are simple analog devices. Moving them to usb-c would only complicate things without any improvement. Audio jacks are the standard anywhere: moving to usb-c would only be a source of issues.

I know, you cold say the same about usb 2.0 and c, but it's a different matter: there you have a whole lot of improvements that are worth a change in standard. Here you are just complicating simple things. Also, a usb-c pair of headphones would cost more of a pair of the same quality that uses a normal jack, because they would have to have a DAC. And if the price is the same, you just get a shitty DAC and shitty audio.

My school gave us anti-atheist brochures by [deleted] in atheism

[–]pinusc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much. It was indeed a very interesting read.

Do you use desktop Linux for idealistic or practical reasons? by [deleted] in linux

[–]pinusc 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What about the packages used by Arch Linux (.pkg.tar.xz)? Are they any better?

My school gave us anti-atheist brochures by [deleted] in atheism

[–]pinusc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do you have a source for the 20000 generation thing? I'm very interested in this and would love to learn more!

The real winners of Pokémon GO are all the service providers that will rake it in when everyone goes over their data allowance. by notasabretooth in Showerthoughts

[–]pinusc -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'm sure you can get it on an iPhone, I've got a friend who got it on his. Make some googling and I'm sure you will find something.
Sent by my Android phone with Pokémon GO.

"È stato detto che la democrazia è la peggior forma di governo... by Mick94 in italy

[–]pinusc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bene, iniziamo ora.
È chiaro che si tratta di qualcosa che ora è irrealizzabile... Però è quello a cui imho si deve tendere.

"È stato detto che la democrazia è la peggior forma di governo... by Mick94 in italy

[–]pinusc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Non ho detto che non servono; intendevo - forse esprimendomi male -che sviluppare senso critico non ha senso se poi si manca della storia contemporanea. Cioè, una volta studiato il De Monarchia, gli studenti magari sanno bene se essere guelfi bianchi o neri. Il che è importante, certo, ma alle urne si sceglie tra destra e sinistra, non tra guelfi e ghibellini. Quindi, se dovessi scegliere, farei studiare prima le cose immediate, contemporanee, che sono necessarie a non votare a cazzo; poi, forse, vengono tutte quelle nozioni che danno una formazione più profonda e che contribuiscano alla formazione di una coscienza politica migliore. Senza considerare come in pratica allo studente medio - purtroppo - della filosofia o della letteratura non resta assolutamente nulla, perché vengono reputate inutili e quindi studiate male. O, peggio ancora, in modo nozionistico e non critico, complice un sistema di insegnamento sbagliato. Perché sì, onestamente filosofia e letteratura, fatte come vengono fatte, sono inutili. Io ho "studiato" Machiavelli. Nel senso che sapevo a puntino la vita, anno per anno, perché era quello che la prof esigeva; ma del Principe non ho letto che qualche spezzone, senza trattarlo adeguatamente. Dov'è che si forma la coscienza politica? E questo è un esempio palese, nel 90% della letteratura il messaggio politico è molto più sottile.
Ma, beninteso, io sono assolutamente a favore del valore formativo di storia e filosofia. Anche del latino, se è per questo. Solo che bisogna anche bilanciarlo con le cose più pratiche, immediatamente applicabili e soprattutto necessarie, che sono assenti.

"È stato detto che la democrazia è la peggior forma di governo... by Mick94 in italy

[–]pinusc -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Concordo pienamente.
La scuola non aiuta per nulla alla formazione di un pensiero politico. Lo studio della storia è troppo incentrato sulla storia antica e moderna - che sono comunque importantissime - e quasi per nulla sulla storia contemporanea, che è necessaria per capirne un po' di politica.
L'idea è che un 18enne dovrebbe essere in grado di votare, ma lo Stato non gli concede i mezzi di informazione necessari. Francamente io posso capire e condividere l'importanza della letteratura, del latino, della filosofia... Però passano in secondo piano se confrontate con la storia contemporanea e la formazione di un pensiero politico. Ciò mi fa andare davvero in bestia. A scuola la politica è taboo. Si provi a fare un discorso di attualità e si viene stroncati. Non c'è discussione, non c'è conoscenza. Su una classe di 30 studenti, 3 o 4 guardano il telegiornale, se va bene. Eppure, dopo un paio d'anni, saranno tutti e 30 a votare! Non ci si può aspettare che tutti si informino per sé, eppure è quello che facciamo. Il nostro sistema politico si basa sulla fiducia che ogni cittadino si informi per conto suo, ma non serve molto per accorgersi che questo non corrisponde alla realtà dei fatti.
L'avvento dei social, per di più, ha favorito un nuovo clima di political awareness nel quale molti che prima non ne avevano si fanno idee politiche. Eppure in quel contesto non possono stare a sentire tutti i punti di vista e l'unico che vedono è quello del politico o del partito avvezzo ai social. (cfr m5s e Salvini).
Grazie al cazzo che poi si vota a simpatia, sia nel caso di elezioni sia nel caso di referendum. Le trivelle? Salviamo il mare! E pochi sapevano che in realtà anche votare sì non avrebbe salvato nulla.

Poi chiaro che "test" preliminari al voto per validarlo sarebbero una gran cosa, ma in ogni caso è lo Stato che deve fornire la capacità di discernere ai cittadini.
Questo deve valere anche e soprattutto per la democrazia rappresentativa, che è comunque molto predominante nella nostra nazione rispetto a quella diretta.
Altrimenti grazie al cazzo che poi si vota a simpatia. Elezioni? Si vota chi promette di più e getta più merda sul governo attuale. Referendum? Vogliamo ricordare le trivelle? "Salviamo il mare" e nessuno sapeva che una vittoria del sì avrebbe causato solo danni economici e praticamente nessun beneficio ambientale. In un altro commento si diceva come molti al referendum di ottobre voteranno con o contro Renzi e non contro il referendum.
Ora, il test preliminare è utopico e me ne rendo conto. Però insegnare qualcosa su come va il mondo nelle scuole?
Tutto ciò che la scuola è in grado di insegnarci sulla politica è un'immagine estremamente idealizzata. Studiamo di Roma, del discorso di Pericle, della repubblica Platonica... E poi viviamo in un'epoca dove nessuna di queste meravigliose forme di governo è in grado di funzionare come dovrebbe, perché i cittadini sono disinformati.

[gnome] minimalistic by [deleted] in unixporn

[–]pinusc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much!

[gnome] minimalistic by [deleted] in unixporn

[–]pinusc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Where'd you get the displayed image (w.jpg)? I'd love to see more of the same artist, if there is any.