We propose a new framework for generative modeling based on a discrete-time stochastic control formulation of measure transport. Adapting classic results from control theory, we formulate our problem as a linear program whose dual variables correspond to the \emph{optimal value function} of the control problem, which directly encodes the optimal control policy. Exploiting this LP formulation, we develop an efficient simulation-free primal-dual algorithm for computing approximately optimal value functions and the associated \emph{value-driven transport} (VDT) policies which approximate the true optimal policy. We show that well-trained VDT policies enjoy numerous favorable properties in comparison with other state-of-the-art methods based on flows, diffusions, or Schrödinger bridges: they lead to straight transport paths which can be simulated quickly and robustly, and can be enhanced in all the same ways as diffusion and flow-based models (e.g., conditional generation, classifier-free guidance, unpaired data-to-data translation are all easy to incorporate). We evaluate our methodology in a range of experiments, with results that indicate strong performance and good potential for scalability.

The Hilbert-Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC) and its joint-independence extension $d\mathrm{HSIC}$ are degenerate $V$-statistics whose data-dependent weighted-$χ^2$ null limits force a permutation calibration that multiplies the per-test cost by the number of permutations, in practice two orders of magnitude. Adapting the recent martingale MMD construction for two-sample testing to the (joint) independence problem, we introduce two studentised statistics whose null distributions are standard normal regardless of the data law, so that a single normal-quantile lookup replaces the permutation step entirely. The first, $m\mathrm{HSIC}$, is a self-normalised lower-triangular sum of the Hadamard product of two empirically centred Gram matrices. Under independence and bounded-fourth-moment kernels it converges to a standard normal. It is consistent against every fixed alternative, and runs at quadratic cost in the sample size without any sample split, matching the biased HSIC $V$-statistic. Our second statistic, $md\mathrm{HSIC}$, achieves finite-sample consistency with a single half-sample split: the centring is estimated on one half and the lower-triangular self-normalised martingale is run on the other, shrinking the conditional-mean residual to a quantity that is exponentially small in $d$, so the statistic is asymptotically standard normal at every fixed number of jointly tested variables, with a per-test cost that grows only linearly in $d$. On synthetic data with per-variable input dimension from $1$ to $500$ and between $2$ and $10$ jointly tested variables, both statistics match the empirical type-I error rate and test power of permutation-calibrated baselines while running $25$ to $60\times$ faster.

Discrete diffusion models are often trained through clean-data prediction, but the prediction can be used in different ways to define the reverse dynamics. In Masked Diffusion Models (MDM) these choices largely coincide, whereas in Uniform Diffusion Models (UDM) they do not. We show that the standard plug-in bridge parameterization for UDM is not optimized by the denoising posterior, but by a leave-one-out posterior that predicts each clean token without using its own noisy observation. This identifies a mismatch between the plug-in ELBO and the usual cross-entropy denoising objective. We characterize the leave-one-out target and derive exact conversions between the denoiser, the leave-one-out posterior, and the score. These conversions allow us to disentangle parameterization and training objective. Our results also lead to inference improvements without any additional training through an informed predictor-corrector sampler and improved temperature sampling based on the leave-one-out predictor. We further introduce an absorbing-state reformulation of uniform diffusion that preserves the UDM joint law while decomposing it into masked-diffusion-like sampling operations, with simpler denoising posteriors, carry-over unmasking, and a natural remasking mechanism. On language modeling, leave-one-out parameterizations consistently improve UDM generation, while the absorbing construction matches or surpasses masked diffusion. These results suggest that the empirical gap between masked and uniform diffusion is driven less by the choice of marginals themselves than by parameterization and sampling design. The code and models can be found at https://github.com/samsongourevitch/rev_udm.

Survival analysis aims to estimate a time-to-event distribution from data with censored observations. Many existing methods either impose structural assumptions on the hazard function or discretize the time axis, which may limit flexibility and introduce approximation errors. We propose the Survival Diffusion Probabilistic Model (SDPM), a generative approach to continuous-time survival analysis. SDPM models the conditional distribution of the survival outcome, represented by the pair of observed time and censoring indicator, $\mathbb{P}(T,δ\mid \mathbf{x})$, using a denoising diffusion model. Under the assumption of conditionally independent censoring, conditional samples generated by the model can be transformed into survival function estimates using the Kaplan-Meier estimator. This formulation avoids parametric assumptions on the event-time distribution and does not require a discretization of the output time space. The model operates in a transformed target space, using standardized log-times and a continuous Gaussian-mixture representation of the censoring indicator. We evaluate SDPM on ten real survival datasets and compare it with five strong baselines, including tree-based, boosting-based, and neural survival models. Results show that SDPM achieves competitive predictive performance across C-index, integrated time-dependent AUC, and integrated Brier score. A study on synthetic Cox-Weibull data demonstrates that SDPM can recover the shape of an underlying continuous survival distribution more accurately than a strong nonparametric baseline when sufficiently many samples are generated. An ablation study confirms the importance of the proposed target-space transformations, which improve event-rate calibration, reduce invalid generated times, and provide consistent gains in predictive discrimination. Codes implementing the proposed model are publicly available.

The Pro Max model offers a touchscreen smart case with an AI note taker. Following the initial tease of its Thus AI chip, Anker announced the first earbuds with the component during its Anker Day event. The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max both utilize the chip for what the company calls Whisper Clear voice performance. Of course, the usual earbud features are here -- active noise cancellation (ANC), voice controls and personalized sound -- but there are some unique tools available on these models as well. Those include an AI Note-Taker on the Liberty 5 Pro Max and touchscreen charging cases for both.

'Creepy' Listening Tool for Targeted Ads Didn't Actually Work, FTC Says Three firms will pay nearly $1 million for selling "Active Listening" technology that they claimed tapped people's phones for advertising. The FTC alleges the "tech" was just pricey email lists. The Federal Trade Commission announced on Thursday that Cox Media Group and two other marketing companies, MindSift LLC and 1010 Digital Works, have agreed to collectively pay nearly $1 million to settle allegations that they deceived their customers--other businesses--by claiming that they could help target ads based on audio recordings collected from consumers' smart devices via a marketing service called Active Listening. In a statement to WIRED, a spokesperson for CMG says, "We are pleased to have this matter resolved. Our local marketing team relied on marketing materials provided to us by a third-party vendor about their product. We withdrew the materials expeditiously and stopped further use of the product."

Minka Kelly uncorks a heater at 45, ABS backfires spectacularly and LSU parents vs a security guard! Robot's lifeless corpse hauled off stage after fall during disastrous Michael Jackson impression Bear cubs spar on woman's front porch in adorable viral nature video, reactions pour in Show Tiffany Stratton some respect -- a boob job doesn't mean the WWE champ is made of plastic Britney Spears stuns with a post-plea deal Instagram dance, college baseball HOT mic & is this dream normal? Landlord in a tenant's home for repairs was caught on a security camera getting it on with a woman instead Paige Spiranac continues her generational golf content influencing run in 2026, Mike Alstott is ripped & MEAT! 'World's sexiest fan' drops her World Cup anthem and here's why you never assist a bike thief Wearing only a watch, a headlamp and flip-flops isn't a great disguise when trashing a neighbor's motion light Stephen Miller: The American people rejected'third world' Democratic policies by voting for Trump Former CENTCOM commander'concerned' about Iran's residual military capabilities Wall Street titans sound alarm on Mamdani's'reckless' targeting of top employers Retired general says Iran is fighting a'war of resistance' Kevin Warsh's potential Fed chairmanship sparks economic debate on inflation Minnesota fraud mastermind sentenced to 41.5 years in prison OutKick-Culture Selena Gomez is reportedly bringing her talents to award-winning director's new four-hour X-rated movie Don't let reports that Selena Gomez is going to be starring in an X-rated movie fool you. This isn't going to be a poorly produced amateur-level movie thrown together with someone who doesn't know what they're doing. It's also not a sex tape, for the folks who can't get their act together.

Selena Gomez is reportedly bringing her talents to award-winning director's new four-hour X-rated movie Minka Kelly uncorks a heater at 45, ABS backfires spectacularly and LSU parents vs a security guard! Robot's lifeless corpse hauled off stage after fall during disastrous Michael Jackson impression Bear cubs spar on woman's front porch in adorable viral nature video, reactions pour in Show Tiffany Stratton some respect -- a boob job doesn't mean the WWE champ is made of plastic Britney Spears stuns with a post-plea deal Instagram dance, college baseball HOT mic & is this dream normal? Landlord in a tenant's home for repairs was caught on a security camera getting it on with a woman instead Paige Spiranac continues her generational golf content influencing run in 2026, Mike Alstott is ripped & MEAT! 'World's sexiest fan' drops her World Cup anthem and here's why you never assist a bike thief Wearing only a watch, a headlamp and flip-flops isn't a great disguise when trashing a neighbor's motion light Stephen Miller: The American people rejected'third world' Democratic policies by voting for Trump Former CENTCOM commander'concerned' about Iran's residual military capabilities Wall Street titans sound alarm on Mamdani's'reckless' targeting of top employers Retired general says Iran is fighting a'war of resistance' Kevin Warsh's potential Fed chairmanship sparks economic debate on inflation Minnesota fraud mastermind sentenced to 41.5 years in prison President Tiffany Hernandez said the school was'using a new AI system as our reader' and called it'a lesson learned' Kurt Knutsson discusses growing public backlash against AI, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt being booed at a University of Arizona commencement. He further discusses the development of artificial eggs that could revive dead species. I'll be honest with you guys, I don't know what to make of my feelings toward artificial intelligence, because my mood on the subject changes by the day.

Meta Is in Crisis, Google Search's Makeover, and AI Gets Booed by Graduates This week on, the team discusses Meta's recent layoffs and what they've been hearing from employees about the increasingly grim vibes at the company. They also talk about Elon Musk losing his lawsuit against OpenAI and share highlights from Google's annual conference--including an ambitious AI vision to change how people search the web. Finally, what do recent college graduates and women whose spouses work in AI have in common? Google Search Goes Agentic--and Doesn't Need You Anymore Write to us at [email protected] . You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link . We spoke to more than a dozen employees and it turns out the job cuts are far from the only reason why Meta employees are really going through it. He lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI in really as full a way as you can, as dramatically as possible. I know, Zoë, you're looking forward to talking about that. We're going to get into why young adults might be using AI, but they have very complicated feelings about it. And later in the show, we're going to hear about why women married to AI bros have had enough . This week, the company is letting go of roughly 10 percent of its workforce, which is about 8,000 employees total. It's the latest round of job cuts, adding to the roughly 25,000 jobs that have been cut in the past few years as part of Mark Zuckerberg's Year of Efficiency that started in 2023 and now the latest AI-forward workplace, which he is trying to develop and impose. And while these latest cuts are not as big as some of the rounds of layoffs that have already happened, they're getting a ton of attention because Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, has said that the reason they're happening, in part at least, in large part, is because the company is spending so much money on AI and data centers.

Watch a subscriber-only discussion exploring how AI might enter the physical world. AI companies want to build systems that understand the external world and overcome the limitations of LLMs. Recent developments have brought world models to the forefront of the AI discussion. Watch a conversation with editor in chief Mat Honan, senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven, and AI reporter Grace Huckins exploring how AI might enter the physical world. A woman's uterus has been kept alive outside the body for the first time Jessica Hamzelou Want to understand the current state of AI? Check out these charts. Want to understand the current state of AI? Check out these charts.