Self-contained hello-world program
This is what you had in mind? Or you want any more hacky?

EDITED(2)

Assembler (NASM) { source: 155 bytes, compiled: 384 bytes }

Source code: helloworld.nasm

global _start
_start:
write:
 mov eax, 4
 mov ebx, 1
 mov ecx, h
 mov edx, 12
 int 0x80
exit:
 mov eax, 1
 mov ebx, 0
 int 0x80
h: db 'hello world', 10, 0


Compile

$ nasm helloworld.nasm -f elf64 -o helloworld.o
$ ld helloworld.o -s -o helloworld


Execution

$ ./helloworld 
hello world


Size

$ ls -al helloworld.nasm helloworld
-rw-rw-r-- 1 user user 155 Jan  5 11:08 helloworld.nasm
-rwxrwxr-x 1 user user 384 Jan  5 11:09 helloworld


Platform:

$ uname -io
x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ nasm -v
NASM version 2.09.10 compiled on Oct 17 2011