Technology

Senate passes GENIUS stablecoin bill in a win for the crypto industry

Published

6 months ago

June 17, 2025

Senate passes GENIUS stablecoin bill in a win for the crypto industry

In a 68-30 vote on Tuesday evening, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the GENIUS Act with bipartisan support. Eighteen Democrats joined the majority of Republicans in passing the bill, which is the first to establish a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins, crypto tokens that are pegged to the value of the US dollar.

Its passage had not always been assured. Back in May, nine Democrats who’d previously supported the GENIUS Act suddenly reversed course, asking to revise the bill’s text, and days later, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Ron Wyden (D-WA) successfully killed an attempt to bring the bill to a floor vote by citing several current events involving the Trump family’s crypto ventures, including a controversial dinner for people holding large amounts of their memecoin $TRUMP.

Warren, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee and a longtime consumer protection hawk, ultimately voted against the final version of the GENIUS Act. During a June 11th floor speech, she stated that the bill did not have adequate regulatory guardrails in place to prevent corruption: “It would make Trump the regulator of his own financial company and, importantly, the regulator of his competitors.”

It’s a win, however, for the burgeoning digital assets industry, which has poured hundreds of millions into the political influence game in Washington, hiring political consultants and even a few Members of Congress on their behalf. In an interview prior to Tuesday’s vote, Seth Hertline, Head of Global Policy at the crypto wallet company Ledger, described the GENIUS Act as a political bellwether for the industry as a whole. “If the GENIUS Act derails, everything behind it derails,” he told The Verge.

Related Topics:crypto policy Politics Tech

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Technology

The Game Awards are losing their luster

Published

1 hour ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

It’s Game Awards season, y’all. That special time of the year when we gather together to celebrate video games and the people who make them… by watching expensive commercials briefly punctuated by the odd awards speech or musical performance. For better or worse, The Game Awards is the biggest night on the video game event calendar. But with the way things have been going, lately it’s been more “worse” than it has been “better.”

Between host and industry hypeman Geoff Keighley’s two video game vanity projects, The Game Awards is older and ostensibly more mature than Summer Game Fest. Conceived in 2014 as a way to celebrate both the people who make and play games, the show has always been part awards ceremony, part commercial product. That idea has been executed with varying degrees of success. (Remember the Schick Hydrobot?) But for the last few years, it’s felt like the awards part was increasingly getting in the way of the commercial part.

Alas, poor Hydrobot, we knew him well.

Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images for Schick

That was felt most acutely during the 2023 Game Awards. Developers accepting statues were often drowned out by music or cut off by teleprompters asking them to “please wrap it up” after their roughly 30 seconds of allotted time. Muppets and Death Stranding director Hideo Kojima, though, had no such time limits enforced on them, with Aftermath calculating that 13 acceptance speeches could have fit inside the five minutes Kojima took to explain his game / not-game OD.

2023 was also the first full year into the now endemic video game labor crisis that saw developers laid off by the tens of thousands while studios of popular games got shut down. That crisis went by that year’s game awards with no acknowledgement, angering developers further. “I’m incredibly disappointed in Geoff Keighley for his silence on the state of the industry this year,” Monomi Park senior environment artist Dillon Sommerville told The Verge in 2023.

How to watch The Game Awards

On Thursday, December 11th at 5PM PT / 8PM ET the TGAs will be streamed on Twitch and YouTube. This year, Keighley has also signed a deal to beam the show live via Prime Video where it’ll be free to watch for Prime subscribers.

Keighley, perhaps responding to the bad optics, acknowledged the continuing labor issue in 2024. The Game Awards also introduced a new category, Game Changer, with its inaugural award going to Amir Satvat, a business development director at Tencent who created a resource to help laid-off developers find jobs.

But in the months since the 2024 awards, Keighley has once again been accused of poor treatment of the people he’s supposed to be celebrating. In 2020, The Game Awards announced a new initiative called The Future Class, designed to celebrate game makers, “who represent the bright, bold and inclusive future of video games.” Inductees are honored during the broadcast and provided with networking opportunities, mentorship programs, and other resources throughout the following year. However, there have been reports alleging that Keighley has ignored Future Class concerns and that resources from the program have been materially lacking.

In 2023, the Future Class wrote an open letter to The Game Awards and Keighley demanding recognition of the war in Gaza. This wasn’t without precedent. In 2022, the awards show acknowledged the war in Ukraine. But Keighley didn’t respond to the letter, nor has he mentioned the Future Class that much either. The Game Awards hasn’t named a Future Class in the last two years and won’t be naming anymore according to Future Class organizer Emily Weir. “At this time, we are not planning a new Future Class for this year and do not have any active programming plans for Future Class,” she said in a statement to Game Developer.

Gif of a curly haired man named Pedro Eustache playing an alto flute

Pedro Eustache, affectionately known as Flute Guy, has confirmed he will be performing at The Game Awards.

Gif: The Game Awards

Like a lot of diversity and inclusion-minded programs, Future Class got started in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. But as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have become publicly verboten in the rise of the Trump Administration and the online right, many companies, including game publishers, have diminished or jettisoned their DEI programs. While there has been no explicitly stated reason for the seeming shut down of the Future Class, it seems like The Game Awards is just doing what it always does — whatever’s popular at the time.

For as much as The Game Awards has lost the veneer of respectability among some of the people whose work it’s meant to celebrate, rest assured, it ain’t going anywhere. The Game Awards broadcast nets millions of viewers with a record-breaking 154 million livestreams in 2024. That’s a lot of eyeballs that developers pay a lot of money to get in front of. And even for those who don’t buy airtime, having your game featured at all during the presentation can net a big boost in sales. After Balatro was nominated for and won multiple awards last year including best debut indie, its publisher PlayStack shouted out the awards specifically for contributing to a huge increase in players.

More generally, the awards also provide a nice focal point for the disparate online gaming communities to gather around… and bitch about. E3 is long gone, and the other big events (not also run by Keighley) are the publisher-specific direct livestreams. With everything so fractured now, yelling with your friends or colleagues about how Hades was robbed for game of the year (an event I will never get over) is fun and something TGAs are singularly suited to provide. It is not the Oscars of gaming — DICE, the BAFTAs, and the International Game Development Awards (IGDA) pretty well take care of that. But if you want popularity, production values, and Flute Guy, there’s nothing like The Game Awards — even though some of the shine is starting to wear off.

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Ash Parrish

Technology

3D printed cornea restores sight in world first

Published

2 hours ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

3D printed cornea restores sight in world first

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Surgeons at Rambam Eye Institute have made medical history.

They restored sight to a legally blind patient using a fully 3D printed corneal implant grown entirely from cultured human corneal cells. This marked the first time a corneal implant that did not rely on donor tissue had ever been transplanted into a human eye.

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A breakthrough that turns one donor cornea into hundreds

The cornea came from a healthy deceased donor and was then multiplied in the lab. Researchers used the cultured cells to print about 300 transparent implants with Precise Bio’s regenerative platform.

Their system builds a layered structure that looks and behaves like a natural cornea. It is designed to provide clarity, strength and long-term function.

HOW A TINY RETINAL IMPLANT IS HELPING PEOPLE REGAIN THEIR SIGHT

Since donor shortages prevent millions from receiving sight-saving care each year, this approach could transform access. Many patients in developed countries wait only a few days for a transplant, while others wait years due to low tissue availability. A single donor cornea that can create hundreds of implants changes that equation.

The surgery used a fully 3D printed corneal implant grown from cultured human cells and restored sight to a legally blind patient. (Rambam Eye Institute)

The surgery that proved it works

Professor Michael Mimouni, director of the Cornea Unit in the Department of Ophthalmology at Rambam Eye Institute, led the surgical team. He described the moment as unforgettable because the lab-grown implant restored sight to a real patient for the first time.

He says, “What this platform shows and proves is that in the lab, you can expand human cells. Then print them on any layer you need, and that tissue will be sustainable and work. We can hopefully reduce waiting times for all kinds of patients waiting for all kinds of transplants.”

The procedure is part of an ongoing Phase 1 clinical trial that assesses safety and tolerability in people with corneal endothelial disease. This achievement reflects years of work across research labs, operating rooms and industry. It also shows how coordinated teams can push new treatments from concept to clinical reality.

How the science fits into a bigger future

The breakthrough will have a permanent home in Rambam’s upcoming Helmsley Health Discovery Tower. The new Eye Institute will consolidate care, training and research under one roof. It aims to speed the move from emerging science to real-world treatment for patients across Northern Israel and beyond.

Precise Bio says its 3D printing system could eventually support other tissues like cardiac muscle, liver and kidney cells. That future will require long trials and extensive validation, but the path now looks more achievable.

POPULAR WEIGHT-LOSS DRUGS LINKED TO SUDDEN VISION LOSS, RESEARCH SUGGESTS

Professor Michael Mimouni led the surgical team at Rambam Eye Institute’s Cornea Unit. (Rambam Eye Institute)

What this means for you

If corneal disease affects someone in your family, this work brings new hope. Donor tissue may continue to play a role in many regions, but lab-grown implants offer a way to expand access where shortages hold patients back. The success of this first transplant also suggests a future where regenerative medicine supports many types of tissue repair.

This milestone also shows how long scientific breakthroughs take to reach real patients. The first 3D printed cornea design appeared in 2018 and only now reached human use. Even so, the progress feels fast when the result is restored sight.

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EYE DROPS MAY REPLACE READING GLASSES FOR THOSE STRUGGLING WITH AGE-RELATED VISION LOSS

Kurt’s key takeaways

This successful transplant marks a turning point for eye care. It suggests a world where the limits of donor supply do not decide who receives sight-saving surgery. As more trial results arrive, we will see how far this technology can scale and which patients stand to benefit first.

If regenerative implants become common, what medical challenge should researchers focus on next? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com

The breakthrough shows how one donor cornea can generate hundreds of lab-grown implants, offering new hope for people who face long waits for sight-saving treatment. (iStock)

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Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

Figma adds more Photoshop-like AI tools for image editing

Published

1 day ago

December 10, 2025

Press Room

Figma adds more Photoshop-like AI tools for image editing

Figma is launching three new AI-powered creative tools to help users edit their images without jumping to another platform. The new tools are available in Figma Design and Figma Draw, and can be used to quickly remove objects from an image, isolate objects so they can be repositioned, and extend images beyond their previous dimensions.

The Erase object and Isolate object tools are designed to work alongside Figma’s existing lasso tool, which allows users to draw around specific sections of the image they want to edit. Any objects or people within these selections can then be instantly erased from the image while filling in the background behind them, or separated from the background layer to reposition or edit them directly.

The Expand image tool expands the background of an image to fit new aspect ratios “without distortion,” according to Figma. It sounds similar to Adobe’s Generative Expand tool for Photoshop, using generative AI to fill the extended space in a way that blends into the original image. Adobe also has similar AI tools for erasing and isolating objects — Figma doesn’t size up to the vast suite of creative tools available across Adobe’s apps, but introducing its own native features gives Figma users fewer reasons to use other platforms for those editing requirements.

Figma is also launching a new image editing toolbar to house these editing features in one place, alongside existing capabilities like the Remove background tool. These new features are available to Figma users with “Full Seat” access, which is the subscription tier required to unlock all of Figma’s design products. Next year, Figma says it plans to make the new editing tools available across other apps within its platform.