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dithered_djinn

142 karma · joined June 27, 2020

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dithered_djinn··on cjsawk: A Self-Hosted Compiler for a Subset of C, JavaScript, and Awk
This talk describes the implementation of a self hosted C compiler that is implemented in a dialect of C that is simultaneously valid C, JavaScript, and AWK. This allows us to ship a C compiler in source form that can be built on many different platforms.

cjsawk itself is also capable of building a C99 compiler. In turn this allows us to bootstrap from source all the way up to GCC.

Web demo: https://cosinusoidally.github.io/tcc_simple/experiments/cjsa...

Project github repo: https://github.com/cosinusoidally/tcc_simple/tree/master/exp...

Slides: https://online.accuconference.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10...

dithered_djinn··on MAME 0.276
"Most of the digital functionality is emulated. Audio is not yet emulated."

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/13404/files#diff-f78737...

dithered_djinn··on FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies
> I'd go further and advocate for legally mandated source code escrow for copyright validity, and GPL like rights to the code once public, which would happen if the software is off the market for N years.

I agree 100%.

dithered_djinn··on FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies
I see what you are saying and don't completely disagree. I however feel that the spirit of free software is to set all software free. From that it follows, that if we are going to follow the current route of complete disregard for authorship and licenses, then the free software movement should continue fighting to liberate all software in existence. In other words, those LLM's that you mention that are to enable software freedom for users who cannot code themselves, in a fair world, they would be trained with both free and proprietary software. After all, a derivative work from a proprietary software should also be subject to fair use. The output produced by the LLM wouldn't necessarily be a literal copy-paste of any particular proprietary software... as the models would just be "learning" from them. The company could just continue doing business as usual, build on their brand and yada yada yada.

Regarding the licensing, I'll restate my point that the Affero license was created precisely in a moment where the existing licenses could no longer uphold the freedoms that the Free Software Foundation set out to defend. A change of license was the right solution at that particular point in time and, if it worked then, I think we can all agree that there is at least a precedent that such a course of action might work and should at the very least be considered as a possible solution for today's problems.

That said, my own personal view is more aligned with demanding the nation states to pressure big corporations so that currently closed-source software becomes at least open-source (either by law, or simply by stopping using it and invest their budget in free alternatives instead). Note I said open source and not free. I just would like to read their code and feed it to my LLM's :)

dithered_djinn··on FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies
That might indeed apply to open source software.

If we instead adopt the view of free software (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....), the fact that OpenAI and other large corporations train their large-language models behind closed doors - with no disclosure of their training corpus - effectively represents the biggest attack on GPL-licensed code to date.

No evidence suggests that OpenAI and others exclude GPL-licensed repositories from their training sets. And nothing prevents the incorporation of GPL-licensed code into proprietary codebases. Note that a few papers have documented the regurgitation of literal text snippets by large language models (one example: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.12367v2).

To me, this seems like the LLM-version of using coin-mixing to obscure the trail of Bitcoin transactions in the blockchain. The current situation also reminds me of how the generalization of the SaaS model led to the creation of the Affero GPL license (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html).

LLM's enable the circumvention of the spirit of free software licenses, as well as of the legal mechanisms to enforce them.

dithered_djinn··on Show HN: Font Pair – I was wasting hours choosing fonts, so I built this
Kudos for writing such a handy tool! I love the fact that it is self-contained in one file.

Adding the option to filter by monospaced typefaces would make it even more amazing, imho. I would totally use a version of it that had the ability to "pair" three fonts: heading font, body font, and coding font.

The cherry on top would be enabling support for locally-installed fonts.

Thanks for sharing!

dithered_djinn··on Popular gut probiotic craps out in randomized controlled trial
Here is the full text of that article:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009167492...

dithered_djinn··on AI-generated sad girl with piano performs the text of the MIT License
No need to anthropomorphize. Suno's latest model has a generation limit of exactly 2 minutes, which explains the last sentence being left out.
dithered_djinn··on Ask HN: What are your favorite conferences?
Sadly, Strange Loop's 2023 edition was announced to be the last:

https://twitter.com/strangeloop_stl/status/15738005283452682...

dithered_djinn··on A homeless man built a life underground Hampstead Heath (2020)
https://youtu.be/9zxPozP4yoM
dithered_djinn··on Some deaf children in China can hear after gene treatment
The new treatment applies only to one specific cause of deafness at birth: a defect in a gene that produces a protein called otoferlin.
dithered_djinn··on AI-generated naked child images shock Spanish town of Almendralejo
In 2015, Spain amended its law to specifically protect its citizens from this type of activity (known as "pseudopornography"). See https://www.boe.es/diario_boe/txt.php?id=BOE-A-2015-3439.
dithered_djinn··on Binary pan-cancer distinct classes defined by YAP/TEAD activity
Cancer heterogeneity impacts therapeutic response, driving efforts to discover over-arching rules that supersede variability. We define pan-cancer binary classes based on distinct expression of YAP and YAP-responsive adhesion regulators. We show that opposite pro- or anti-cancer YAP activity functionally defines binary YAPon or YAPoff cancer classes that express or silence YAP, respectively. YAPoff solid cancers are neural/neuroendocrine and frequently RB1−/−, such as retinoblastoma, small cell lung cancer, and neuroendocrine prostate cancer. YAP silencing is intrinsic to the cell of origin, or acquired with lineage switching and drug resistance. The binary cancer groups exhibit distinct YAP-dependent adhesive behavior and pharmaceutical vulnerabilities, underscoring clinical relevance. Mechanistically, distinct YAP/TEAD enhancers in YAPoff or YAPon cancers deploy anti-cancer integrin or pro-cancer proliferative programs, respectively. YAP is thus pivotal across cancer, but in opposite ways, with therapeutic implications.
dithered_djinn··on Show HN: LCC – Open-Source Spatial Audio from Stereo Speakers
https://github.com/MeteorStudioASU/lcc/pull/5
dithered_djinn··on Show HN: LCC – Open-Source Spatial Audio from Stereo Speakers
It already compiles on Linux without any modifications whatsoever:

  g++ -O2 -march=native -mtune=native -D__LINUX_PULSE__ -D__LINUX_ALSA__ -D__UNIX_JACK__ \
      lcc_rtaudio.cpp RtAudio.cpp -o lcc -pthread -ljack -lasound  -lpulse-simple -lpulse
The above will give you a binary with the Jack, ALSA and PulseAudio backends baked in.