Thalia Archibald
thalia@discuss.systems
<p>Computer science PhD student at the University of Utah, researching compiler verification with <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@regehr" class="u-url mention">@<span>regehr</span></a></span>.<br />UNIX historian and archivist.<br />Occasional Rust standard library contributor.</p>
Posts
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What are some games that never redraw the screen—only draw additively—and can be represented as text or ASCII art? This is the class of games that can be played on a teletype, besides the obvious text adventures. With reverse line feed like the Teletype Model 37, a game board can be filled in, play by play. * Minesweeper * Picross * Sudoku * Voltorb Flip * crossword * regular expression crossword * virus war / Paper Tactics * tic-tac-toe * hangman #retrocomputing #retrogaming #teletype
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I like finding and fixing bugs in 52-year-old software, especially when all later versions retain the bug. #unix #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing
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Santa Monica Pier / Blinn-ratio Utah teapot
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I hate UNIX. #unix #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing
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Dig Dug at the local arcade is now filled out with my high scores. I’ve still got it.
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Might be getting a PDP-11/23 soon!!! :)
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I just acquired a Teletype Model 37 reperforator-transmitter! I've been trying to track down a Model 37 for two years now, hitting many dead ends. Well, this is the paper tape reader/punch that would connect with a regular Model 37 KSR, so it's not the same thing. But I've been wanting to be able to work with paper tape, so it's still quite exciting. I had never seen such a reperforator before, until I was asked for details on it. I'll be hauling it from North Carolina next...
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Codeberg&#39;s recent statement and updated policy on LLM usage on their platform is admirable. They make several well-reasoned points that are often overlooked in the hype and distraction. https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html
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@ricci We need this in SLC! https://www.404media.co/luddite-events-nyc-off-tech-summer-of-ludd/
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My talk was teased in SIGGRAPH for Beginners!
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Go punch a card! https://kishlay-notabot.github.io/reviving-ibm-punch-card.html #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing
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In reviewing my research notes for a SIGGRAPH interview, I'm surprised at how accurately I determined the who and when of the UNIX V4 tape. Before we had any supporting documents with the tape, I had to look elsewhere. My best source was a list of the first UNIX users outside of Bell Labs, which lists Martin Newell of the University of Utah as #19, but does not have any dates. To estimate when the tape would have been made, I tracked down the other institutions' histories and UNIX licen...
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Tonight at Utah Rust, we're going to be building mini async runtimes, led by David Brungardt. Come and learn async with us! :rustacean: https://www.meetup.com/utah-rust/events/314696647/ https://github.com/carllerche/tokioconf-2026-workshop-exercises #rust #async #tokio
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The CBS story for our recovery of UNIX V4 has now been published! It's a fun, short clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HatXp2dqxb4 #unix #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing
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Typing on @icm&#39;s Teletype Model 35 ASR last year. ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY. #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing
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How were { } curly braces typed with a Teletype Model 33 on UNIX? These characters are especially important for C, but absent on this terminal. This is a tour of the coevolution of UNIX and C, from this perspective, featuring “hello, world” through the ages. https://thalia.dev/blog/unix-braces/ #unix #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing
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It&#39;s teletype day! #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing
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A cursed feature of C in 1972: Labels and functions were reassignable (i.e., lvalues)! For example, this is a clever way to initialize once: goto init; init: ouptr = oubuf; init = init1; init1: which is compiled to: jmp *4120 mov 4136,4144 mov 4122,4120 Note the indirect jump and assignment to that address. This would have also worked with functions. #c #unix #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing
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My talk at VCF PNW yesterday went well! Thanks for all the great questions. Recording forthcoming. #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #unix
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Presenting Brainfuino [-]+ Rev 1.1, the Brainfuck microcontroller! My Christmas present from @Archibald_M has arrived! I&#39;d been wanting a Brainfuino for years now, an Arduino-like microcontroller that only runs Brainfuck programs, but they&#39;re not sold anywhere. So, Matthew took up the challenge to understand Eduardo&#39;s design, manufacture the PCBs through JLPCB and source the parts. He even fixed some issues in the original design, like the unstable clock, and made improv...
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Look what I found today! It&#39;s Martin Newell&#39;s 1975 dissertation on procedural modeling, with the first appearance of the Utah teapot! 🧵 Scan: https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s651906h #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #graphics #utah
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After @mflatt&#39;s discussion on call-by-need yesterday, I&#39;m thinking about GHC internals again. I&#39;m back to my side quest of formalizing a small language that was written in Haskell, as implemented, including all the bugs from unintended laziness. Revisiting the STG machine papers now after ~4 years, they&#39;re much more approachable. I&#39;m thinking I&#39;ll model STG in Rocq or maybe Lean, hack GHC to dump my STG for the language, then model an optimized ver...
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I found a minor correction in the Static Program Analysis book (Møller and Schwartzbach), but apparently it was intentional: &gt; This is actually a little detail I typically use in my lectures to see if the students are paying attention 🙂 #programminglanguages
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A new UNIX snapshot from 1977 to be released soon!!! #unix #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing
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RFC draft: Meow https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-meow-mrrp-00.html
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Impressive software work on a UNIVAC! https://farlow.dev/2026/04/17/running-a-minecraft-server-and-more-on-a-1960s-univac-computer #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing
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The reduction and huge type derivation of a simple expression: (car[num] (cons[num] ⸢1⸣ null[num])) This proof tree is as patched together as a &#39;70s pre-LaTeX thesis! (For Matthew Flatt&#39;s Programming Languages and Semantics course: https://my.eng.utah.edu/~cs7520/) #programminglanguages
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Happy HTTP 418: "I'm a teapot" day!
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I now have my own Utah teapot! This ordinary teapot is the &quot;hello world&quot; object of computer graphics and has cameos in countless productions. A thread on teapots and UNIX… 🧵 Photo: My Melitta teapot, 2026-04-16. #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #unix #utah
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Utah computer history: This IBM 7030 at the Computer History Museum is from the BYU physics department, used from 1972 to 1982. It features a 64-bit processor, well ahead of its time at its 1961 release, and was IBM&#39;s first transistorized computer. Only 9 were made. Before this machine&#39;s use at BYU, it was used at MITRE Corporation from 1962. Visited and photos dated 2025-12-20. #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing