LightNews — News, ranked by scholars

August 19, 2026 at 1:24 AM

bergelsonlab

@bergelsonlab.bsky.social

doing the obnoxious thing where i haven't read your paper yet so just based on the post below...this is not a new hypothesis! decades of ling/langdev work have investigated this very idea...indeed you're citing some of the relevant stuff (e.g chomsky, mintz, newport!) Everything old is new again?

Tom McCoy @rtommccoy.bsky.social · May 22

🤖🧠NEW PAPER🧠🤖

Children & neural networks can learn syntax from linear strings of words. How do they do it?

Our hypothesis: Word co-occurrence statistics provide cues to syntax!

(I.e., a new type of bootstrapping to consider!)

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2605.20529

1/n

Paper overview.
Title: "Collocational bootstrapping: A hypothesis about the learning of subject-verb agreement in humans and neural networks"
Authors: Claire Hobbs and Tom McCoy
Method: We trained many neural nets, varying how predictable a subject is given its verb. We tested them on subject-verb agreement
Findings: With the right level of predictability, neural networks robustly generalize. The predictability of child-directed language is near the neural net optimum.
Conclusion: Statistical regularities in word co-occurrence can support the learning of abstract syntactic rules
The text is accompanied by a graph showing neural-network accuracy as a function of the level of variability; the accuracy peaks at an in-between level of variability

May 22, 2026 at 5:53 PM

KR Game Studios

@krgamestudios.bsky.social

Every 100 frames, a "monster spawns, as dictated by 'config.toy'.

No notable impact to the framerate (even w/o the cap).

It feels surreal, like the whole rewrite was worth it.

#gamedev #langdev #toylang

May 1, 2026 at 9:07 AM

oliver

@eikopf.com

this is 400x langdev alice you just wouldn't get it 🙄

February 17, 2025 at 8:17 PM

KR Game Studios

@krgamestudios.bsky.social

This week's progress on Toy:

* added 'srand' to standard lib
* Swapped Toy_Scope to use buckets for memory
* TOY_BUCKET_IDEAL is now 256KB
* Opaques are not equal to anything, even themselves

#coding #gamedev #langdev #toylang

🧵

August 9, 2026 at 6:09 AM

KR Game Studios

@krgamestudios.bsky.social

This week's progress on Toy & ToyBox:

* Added abs() to standard library
* Fixed functions invoked within compounds
* Fixed complex assignments to compound members
* Wrote an article about RNGs

#coding #gamedev #langdev #toylang

July 13, 2026 at 4:02 AM

KR Game Studios

@krgamestudios.bsky.social

This week's progress on Toy & ToyBox:

* Implemented "import as" keyword
* Creeps are rendered and wander around, avoiding terrain

The import keyword now allows scripts to import other files as functions, though issues like circular imports needs work.

#coding #gamedev #langdev #toylang

August 24, 2026 at 12:26 AM

Totalschadenkadse

@schrottkatze.treehouse.systems.ap.brid.gy

fuck it im going back to langdev/gamedev

March 26, 2026 at 2:54 PM

Chris Krycho

@chriskrycho.com

Serious response: YESSSS.

Unserious response: “Did Alexis just decide to replace her blog with langdev?” 😂

February 13, 2025 at 9:23 PM

KR Game Studios

@krgamestudios.bsky.social

This week's progress on Toy:

* added 'array.fillWith()' for large default arrays
* Added unbounded slicing to strings (arrays ignored rn)
* Corrected 'for' keyword to use the three-piece syntax
* Minor comment tweaks and docs adjustments

#coding #gamedev #langdev #toylang

The Toy Programming Language

July 19, 2026 at 4:37 PM

KR Game Studios

@krgamestudios.bsky.social

Do you like games?

Do you like modding?

Do you like games with modding?

I'm building a scripting language to enable easy modding, and I'm gonna build a roguelike with it!

Come check it out, and drop me a follow!

#gamedev #langdev #toylang #roguelike

toylang.com

Front Page - The Toy Scripting Language

February 28, 2025 at 9:35 AM

☽ samhain ☾

@personhood.removal.surgery

unfortunately my code of ethics forbids me from giving money to anyone who thinks golang is acceptable for anything except a counterexample to demonstrate complete langdev incompetence

also my code of ethics mandates HOPPING ON THE KIMI TRAIN CHOO CHOO

Thought for a while ›
You have been granted a full refund of
PLN999.99. Your active subscription has been cancelled. The refund will show up in your bank statement within 10 business days.
† Ask a support question...
Al support can make mistakes. Your support conversation may be used to improve OpenAl services, including our models, if you have training enabled in Settings. Learn more.

July 17, 2026 at 1:35 AM

Julia Egger

@juegger.bsky.social

Hello to everyone in the blue sky! It is time to move to clearer spheres and interact more with cool sciency people again.
Who am I?
🎓Master in #linguistics
🔜 PhD in #psycholinguistics (#LangDev)
👩🏼‍💻 Postdoctoral projectmanager for HE #RESONATE project in #environmental #psychology
❤️ penguins!

November 9, 2023 at 9:50 PM

KR Game Studios

@krgamestudios.bsky.social

This week's progress on Toy:

* Swapped branding to "The Toy Scripting Language"
* Identified known issues with 'import' for future work
* Fixed subtle memory leak with functions + compounds
* Fixed escape keywords breaking nested loops

#coding #gamedev #langdev #toylang

1/7

Documentation For The Toy Scripting Language

GitHub - Ratstail91/Toy: The Toy Programming Language.

September 6, 2026 at 4:20 AM

KR Game Studios

@krgamestudios.bsky.social

Functions are successfully called.

No return statement or tests yet, but it's time for a break.

I'm happy now, even if today is a hard day.

#gamedev #langdev #coding #toylang

github.com/Ratstail91/Toy

The Toy Programming Language. Contribute to Ratstail91/Toy development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

February 17, 2025 at 3:11 AM

KR Game Studios

@krgamestudios.bsky.social

This week's progress on Toy:

* Opaque values are passed as references
* Player memory is inside their own VMs
* Stared working on "creeps"

I've been sick for over a week, so progress has been slow, but it hasn't stopped.

#coding #gamedev #langdev #toylang