mhoyeFeb 6

Being on Team Words Mean Things is difficult these days, particularly when multibillion-dollar companies put out breathless press releases saying "By using our massive language model, whose training data includes every version of GCC ever released, and having it autocorrect its own output by testing it against GCC, we managed to make a C compiler that mostly works for only $20,000 in a week and gosh I have so many feelings."

I mean, what the fuck are we even doing here.

https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-c-compiler

Martin BogdanovFeb 7
Show threadmhoye

Great news everyone thanks to my significant advances in modern algorithmic analysis I am personally able to outperform a warehouse full of specialized GPUs by five orders of magnitude with a single ARM core for one one-millionth the cost in 0.1% of the time by training the "cp(1)" command on only the GCC source and then compiling the output of that program with GCC.

The resulting compiler - which I'm calling "mhoyecc", or as I've taken to calling it, mhoye plus cc, passes 100% of GCC's tests.

Feb 6 at 3:43pmWeb
Show threadmhoyeFeb 6

omg you guys what if the cp command is sentient

what if i copy too much data and then it decides to copy me what do we do then

Show threadmhoyeFeb 6
somebody call the UN i need everyone to know about the existential risks to society of unchecked use of the cp command or as I am calling it, mhoye's basilisk
Show threadmhoyeFeb 7
https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2026/02/07/on-the-crank-spectrum/
On The Crank Spectrum | blarg

Show threadmhoyeFeb 9

The comments in here are amazing btw.

https://github.com/anthropics/claudes-c-compiler/issues/1

Hello world does not compile · Issue #1 · anthropics/claudes-c-compiler

Tested inside fedora 43 container, ubuntu 26.04 container and on regular fedora 42 installation, same error Took example directly from README.md GCC is present and can compile code just fine: root:...

GitHub
Show threadj-r conlinFeb 7

@mhoye

How long before cp(1) converts the planet into a writing mass of gcc source code?

Show threadmhoyeFeb 7
@jrconlin Sooner than anyone suspects! [ominous beeping]
Show threadJeremyFeb 6
@mhoye Ah see, now you've named it, and it sounds scary. That should get some folks attention!
Show threadGreg WilsonFeb 6
@mhoye double-shot espresso this morning?
Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝Feb 6

@mhoye

cpastafarianism

Show threadmhdFeb 6
@mhoye To illustrate the difference between the long term moral implications of using the cp command vis-a-vis the mv command, I wrote this 2000 page Star Wars Extended Universe fan fiction. Grand Admiral Thrawn and a clone of Palpatine have to convince the Rogue Squadron of…
Show threadJonathan HendryFeb 6

@mhoye

Quick start writing fanfic. Perhaps "Mr Men and the the methods of non-profit grifting"

Show threadcrabFeb 6
@mhoye would you like 500 billion dollars?
Show threadmhoyeFeb 6
@operand Yes.
Show threadProgrammer 832-529 🍅Feb 9
@mhoye you'll still have to work out how to make cp get around copyright laws.
Show threadmhoyeFeb 9
@smallsees If I say its a machine learning model then poof: law-magic.
Show threadMichael NewtonFeb 6
@[email protected] Well, first you need to let thousands starve to avoid accidentally offending it in the future when it will time travel you into torment for having... checks notes... been nice to people who lived at the same time as you.​
mhoye (@[email protected])

2.09K Posts, 441 Following, 5.77K Followers · Envoy, arbiter, sysadmin.

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Show thread[Yaseenist] CauseOfBSODFeb 7
@mhoye theres probably a whole bunch of shenanigans you can do with a perfect clone of oneself
Show threadGabriele SveltoFeb 6
@mhoye bonus points if you pipe stuff into sed 's/gcc/mhoyecc/g' for just a small amount of extra power
Show threadmhoyeFeb 6
@gabrielesvelto Whoa man, that's crazy talk. I can't just pipe a codebase through _sed_ and pretend it's mine, I'm not that waterfox guy.
Show threadMichael NewtonFeb 6

@[email protected]

> This was a clean-room implementation (Claude did not have internet access at any point during its development)​

Talking of words meaning something, calling it 'clean-room' when the training data included an implementation of what was being built is... not how I would use those words, at the very least. I also suspect it is not how a lot of lawyers and judges would use those words, either...

mhoye (@[email protected])

2.09K Posts, 441 Following, 5.77K Followers · Envoy, arbiter, sysadmin.

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Show threadTed MielczarekFeb 6
@mhoye @mavnn "clean room" in the sense of what your colleagues see via your webcam.
Source: https://alvarezrafa.com/fernbeziehungen-sueddeutsche-zeitung