[-] ylph@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Pretty sure she is on a petrol one - there is a fuel tank above the front wheel, and you can see the fuel line going into the throttle body above the single piston engine. You can also see the exhaust and muffler below and behind the piston.

Also looking into it more, I don't think the Autoped was ever offered with an electric motor. Apparently the confusion comes from the fact that the company was bought out by the battery manufacturer Eveready, and sold as Eveready Autoped. Eveready modified the Autoped by adding a battery and ignition coil, replacing the original magneto system, but propulsion was always by means of a petrol engine.

I don't think the one in the photo has the battery and coil however - the coil can be seen here in front of the gas tank, but is missing in the OP photo.

Edit: looks like the batteries and coil might have been separate - here is an article from 1917 that describes the Autoped as having a magneto ignition system (no coil) and also a battery box to operate the front and rear lights. And here is an example with an ignition coil powered from the wheel, but no battery box and no lights (which were probably optional) The one in the OP does appear to have the battery box and lights, but uses the magneto ignition, so it's the same model as described in the article.

[-] ylph@lemmy.world 19 points 4 months ago

You have to realize that popular culture was very tightly controlled and restricted by the Polish communist government at this time. This photo was taken at the Jarocin festival, which was a rare chance to see many bands play that otherwise had no radio play or record contracts and often played styles of music that were viewed with great suspicion by the establishment. Recording these live performances and trading tapes was often the only way people got to hear many of these bands.

I grew up in a neighboring country during this time, but I wasn't much into the rock scene then - I was into folk music, which had a similar scene in my country - many folk artists were straight up banned by the government, so it was impossible to hear them on the radio or buy their records, but tape recordings of live performances existed and were traded among the fans. Same of my favorite music from this period only existed in this form. There were even recordings of shows that got shut down by the police mid-set.

The 80s were a period of economic stagnation in eastern Europe, resulting in a lot of pent up anger and angst in the youth, and at the same time, the establishment was slowly losing its grip on the population. As a result artists were getting increasingly bold in channeling this anger and dissatisfaction, of pushing the boundaries of what was allowed, sometimes crossing them and getting slapped down - but you never knew what could happen at a large gathering of the youth back then - taping was an important tool to document and spread this to the wider population.

[-] ylph@lemmy.world 23 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Most Polish people would disagree. Poland got pretty fucked in ww2, from all sides, but at least they managed to hold on to some of their sovereignty and not be forced to join USSR as a Soviet Republic.

This partially allowed the democratization movement to form in Poland in the 80s (with Solidarność) and eventually for Poland to get out from under Russia's boot and join the EU and NATO, and avoid the fate of former Soviet Republics like Belarus and Ukraine.

[-] ylph@lemmy.world 36 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Looks like a JVC RC-660

The guys in the back both have some kind of Grundig - probably C260 or similar.

Here are a bunch of Grundigs as well, also in Poland.

Even more here

Edit: found the same guy as well

[-] ylph@lemmy.world 26 points 4 months ago

Poland was not part of the USSR...

[-] ylph@lemmy.world 23 points 9 months ago
[-] ylph@lemmy.world 31 points 10 months ago

YouTube video ads can't be blocked with just DNS blocking unfortunately, they are served from the same hosts as YouTube videos.

[-] ylph@lemmy.world 21 points 10 months ago

You can have a Linux distro without GNU -Alpine Linux is a popular example

[-] ylph@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Chinese is also not right - 正确的 (zhèngquè de) means "proper"

Left and Right as the sides are 左 (zuǒ) and 右 (yòu) - you can also add 邊 (biān) to each which means "side" to be more explicit, but they are also used separately in many contexts where the left/right meaning is needed.

The Chinese characters for 左 and 右 actually originated as pictograms of the left and right hand in the early forms of Chinese writing, but later forms both contain general "hand" component (𠂇) with components 工 and 口 added for differentiation

[-] ylph@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The first computer I used was a PDP-8 clone, which was a very primitive machine by today's standards - it only had 4k words of RAM (hand-made magnetic core memory !) - you could actually do simple programming tasks (such as short sequences of code to load software from paper tape) by entering machine code directly into memory by flipping mechanical switches on the front panel of the machine for individual bits (for data and memory addresses)

You could also write assembly code on paper, and then convert it into machine code by hand, and manually punch the resulting code sequence onto paper tape to then load into the machine (we had a manual paper punching device for this purpose)

Even with only 4k words of RAM, there were actually multiple assemblers and even compilers and interpreters available for the PDP-8 (FOCAL, FORTRAN, PASCAL, BASIC) - we only had a teletype interface (that printed output on paper), no monitor/terminal, so editing code on the machine itself was challenging, although there was a line editor which you could use, generally to enter programs you wrote on paper beforehand.

Writing assembly code is not actually the same as writing straight machine code - assemblers actually do provide a very useful layer of abstraction, such as function calls, symbolic addressing, variables, etc. - instead of having to always specify memory locations, you could use names to refer to jump points/loops, variables, functions, etc. - the assembler would then convert those into specific addresses as needed, so a small change of code or data structures wouldn't require huge manual process of recalculating all the memory locations as a result, it's all done automatically by the assembler.

So yeah, writing assembly code is still a lot easier than writing direct machine code - even when assembling by hand, you would generally start with assembly code, and just do the extra work that an assembler would do, but by hand.

[-] ylph@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

The kids always adapt though.

There is a strong survivorship bias in this though. Some kids do adapt, maybe even most, but many still are harmed, and have been by unhealthy exposure to radio, television, videogames, etc. in the past. Social media is even wreaking havoc in the older generations right now.

It's easy to point at the survivors and the success stories and say see, there is nothing to worry about - but that's also a bit like pointing at the lifelong smokers who do not get lung cancer as an argument against promoting non-smoking.

[-] ylph@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The history of Taiwan is quite a bit more complex than that, but the PRC (current government in mainland China) has never controlled Taiwan - it was never theirs.

Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1894 until 1945 when Japan was forced to hand it over to the ROC (the successor government to the Qing dynasty, which was the last time you could argue China controlled the island - the Qing managed to almost fully colonize it before losing it to the Japanese, although a lot of the mountainous parts of Taiwan were still mostly autonomous at that time and inhabited by aboriginal Taiwanese who continued to resist the Qing rule)

The ROC takeover of the island is also seen as another colonization by many Taiwanese as well - the descendants of the Qing era colonists who were mostly Hokkien speakers from Fujian, while the ROC migration in 1949 was mostly Mandarin speakers from wider China, who fairly brutally imposed their rule over the island (see 4 decades of martial law, etc.)

ROC managed to reform itself over time, and Taiwan is now a vibrant democratic country which is forging its new national identity where most people would prefer to be left alone to control their own affairs.

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ylph

joined 1 year ago