US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Roger Marshall have introduced a bipartisan bill designed to crack down on illegal uses of cryptocurrency. If passed, The Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act would extend aspects of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), a Nixon-era law Congress passed to combat money laundering, to cover crypto entities such as wallet providers and miners. Specifically, the new legislation would apply so-called “Know-Your-Customer” rules to those entities by directing the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to treat them as money service businesses. Another BSA expansion would require US citizens to file a report with the Internal Revenue Service whenever they engage in transactions that involve more than $10,000 in digital assets.

Additionally, the legislation would direct FinCEN to implement a rule the agency proposed at the end of 2020 that would require financial institutions to report transactions involving “unhosted” digital wallets. Per CoinDesk, those are wallets where the user has complete control over the contents — rather than an exchange or other third party. The legislation would also prohibit financial institutions from using or transacting with digital asset mixers, which are frequently used to obscure the origin of funds.

“Rogue nations, oligarchs, drug lords, and human traffickers are using digital assets to launder billions in stolen funds, evade sanctions, and finance terrorism,” said Senator Warren. “The crypto industry should follow common-sense rules like banks, brokers, and Western Union, and this legislation would ensure the same standards apply across similar financial transactions. The bipartisan bill will help close crypto money laundering loopholes and strengthen enforcement to better safeguard US national security.”

The push from Senators Warren and Marshall to crack down on crypto money laundering comes a day after the Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced civil and criminal charges against FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. Due to time constraints, the likelihood of the bill passing in the current lame-duck session is low. Warren and Marshall will almost certainly need to reintroduce it next year.

One day after Jack Dorsey took to Revue to share his thoughts on the Twitter Files, the company announced it would shut down the newsletter platform early next year. "From January 12th, 2023, it will no longer be possible to access your Revue account," Revue said on Wednesday. "On that date, Revue will shut down and all data will be deleted."

Twitter bought Revue at the start of 2021. At the time, the company argued the acquisition was a natural expansion of its platform. And for a while, it had a point since paid newsletters were all the rage last year. Following the purchase, Twitter moved to quickly integrate the two platforms closer together. At first, the company added Revue signup buttons to Twitter profiles. A month later, it rolled out a feature that allowed users to sign up for Revue newsletters directly from tweets. 

But all of that was before Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter and the newsletter goldrush died out. The billionaire has said one of his goals for Twitter has been to simplify the app. To that end, a handful of features, including Moments and "tweeted from" labels, have been put on the chopping block in recent weeks. So it's not surprising to see Revue get discontinued as well. 

If you use Revue to run a paid newsletter, on December 20th Twitter will set all paid subscriptions to cancel at the end of their billing cycle. "This is to prevent your subscribers being charged for Revue content after the point where it is no longer possible to send newsletters from Revue."

In one of his first all-hands meetings after taking over the company in October, Elon Musk told Twitter employees the website’s financial position was dire, warning bankruptcy was “not out of question.” Since then, it appears the situation at Twitter has become more fraught.

The New York Times reports the company is taking drastic steps to cut costs. In recent “weeks,” Twitter has reportedly not paid rent for its main headquarters in San Francisco and satellite offices in other countries. According to court documents obtained by The Times, the company has also refused to pay a $197,725 bill for charter flights Musk took during his first week at Twitter. Simultaneously, the social media website has continued to cut staff – despite Musk having recently told employees the company was done with layoffs. Among the most recent casualties include Nelson Abramson, the company’s global head of infrastructure. On Monday, the company disbanded its Trust and Safety Council of external advisors.

According to The Times, Musk and other executives have also talked about the potential consequences of denying severance payments to the thousands of people who were let go from the company in recent weeks. When he first took ownership of Twitter, Musk reportedly considered dismissing many of the employees who were subsequently laid off without any severance. However, he eventually decided to give US employees at least one month of severance pay, a move that ensured the company was in compliance with state and federal labor laws.

Amid those cost-cutting efforts, Musk has reshaped Twitter’s legal team in anticipation of the legal battles the company is likely to face in the near future. He recently dismissed Alex Spiro. The criminal defense lawyer was one of Musk’s close personal allies. In 2019, he successfully defended the billionaire in his infamous “pedo guy” defamation case. Musk had charged Spiro with leading the company’s legal and policy teams but reportedly became displeased with his personal lawyer after finding out he had kept James Baker on as Twitter’s deputy general counsel. Musk fired Baker after finding out the former FBI attorney had been responsible for reviewing the company’s decision to restrict posts related to a 2020 article The New York Post published about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Since then, Musk has reportedly brought over “more than half a dozen” lawyers from SpaceX to fill the void left by Spiro and Baker. Among those who are now advising Twitter include SpaceX's Senior Vice President and General Counsel Tim Hughes. Anticipating potential litigation, Musk has also told employees not to pay travel invoices and other vendors the company owes money to for their services.

Apple is reportedly preparing to open iOS to competing app stores. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the company's software and services teams are redesigning the platform to "open up key elements." That effort is likely to end in Apple giving iPhone and iPad users the option to download third-party apps without going through the App Store. In turn, that would allow developers to avoid the company's infamous 30 and 15 percent commissions on payments. Gurman reports the forthcoming charges are primarily designed to placate European Union lawmakers, who recently passed the bloc's sweeping Digital Markets and Services Act, and will be initially implemented on the continent before potentially rolling out to other regions.     

Apple did not immediately respond to Engadget's comment request.  

According to Gurman, Apple plans to have the changes ready to release alongside iOS 17 next year. Companies have until 2024 to be in full compliance with the Digital Markets Act. The legislation is particularly problematic for Apple, as it outlaws many of the speedbumps the company has relied on to make it difficult for consumers to leave iOS. For instance, the act calls for interoperability between different messaging platforms and equal access for outside developers to core operating system features. Critically, it also mandates that platform holders allow for sideloading. 

Apple has consistently lobbied against the practice, calling it a security and privacy risk. Gurman reports the company is considering whether it should enforce certain security requirements on software distributed outside the App Store. "Such apps also may need to be verified by Apple — a process that could carry a free," he suggests.  

Developing...

When Lyft first pledged to go fully electric by the end of 2030, the company detailed a plan that involved an “extremely hard” push on incentives for drivers. Now, more than two years later, the company is rolling out a new EV bundle to encourage drivers to switch.

To start, drivers in California can earn an extra $150 every week through the end of 2024 by completing 50 weekly rides with their personal EVs. You can find more information on the EV Ride Challenge over on Lyft’s website, but important details include a December 31st, 2023, deadline to register and a total individual earnings limit of $8,100.

“Because California is currently Lyft’s largest EV market, the company is using it as a testing ground to understand the best ways to help drivers transition,” a Lyft spokesperson told NBC affiliate KXAN. “From there, Lyft can take learnings to other states across the country.”

To that point, the other incentives Lyft announced today are available nationwide. First, there’s a discount for drivers who charge their cars through EVgo. In select markets, Gold and Platinum drivers can get up to 45 percent off the company’s Pay As You Go rates starting this week. To begin taking advantage of the discounts, you’ll need to link your Lyft Rewards and EVgo accounts.

Drivers with Lyft Direct debit cards can get cashback at public charging stations. The amount will depend on the individual’s Lyft Rewards standing, with Platinum members entitled to a 7 percent return, while Gold and Silver drivers get a more modest 3 percent and 2 percent back. Everyone else can get 1 percent back at stations that accept Mastercard. Lastly, Lyft has partnered with Wallbox to offer drivers discounts on at-home Level 2 charging hardware. The company is also working with COIL to secure pre-negotiated rates for installation.

“We know many drivers on Lyft want to switch to EVs, which is why we’re focused on addressing the biggest barriers they face in transitioning: upfront costs and access to charging,” said Paul Augustine, Lyft’s director of sustainability. “These offerings are the latest in many steps we are taking to support drivers in switching to an EV on Lyft,”

On Monday, the company also announced it’s on track to add “thousands” of new EVs to its Express Drive rental program next year. Lyft previously announced it was aiming to only acquire electric vehicles for the program by 2026, and phase out any remaining internal combustion engine cars by 2028.

A few weeks ago, LG announced its latest UltraGear gaming monitor, the 27GR95QE. Behind the unassuming model number is a display that has a lot of buzz around it. That’s because the spec sheet of the 27GR95QE reads like every monitor wishlist you’ve probably seen in the last few years. It features a flat 27-inch OLED panel with a 2560 x 1440 resolution, a claimed 0.03 millisecond gray-to-gray response time and 98.5 percent DCI-P3 coverage.

A native 240Hz refresh rate makes the 27GR95QE ideal for competitive gaming, but the monitor also comes with AMD FreeSync Premium support and NVIDIA G-Sync Compatible certification. It even includes a VESA Adaptive-Sync badge for good measure. All of that branding means the 27GR95QE is also a good fit for games where your GPU can’t deliver a constant 240 frames per second.

If you want to use the 27GR95QE for current-generation console gaming, you can, thanks to the inclusion of two HDMI 2.1 ports. With HDR10 support and a 1,500,000 to one contrast ratio, it should also make for a good multimedia display. That said, I’ll note here LG’s website doesn’t mention what DisplayHDR certification the 27GR95QE earned and it peaks at a modest 200 nits of brightness, so it’s hard to say what kind of performance you can expect on the HDR front.

LG

All of that brings us to today, with LG finally sharing US pricing and availability for the 27GR95QE. The monitor will cost $1,000 when it ships in January. That’s a fair bit more than you would pay for a similar LED display, but then you miss out on all the advantages that come with an OLED panel. For some, the 27GR95QE will represent their "endgame" monitor. 

On Monday, LG also announced pricing for the 45GR95QE. It’s basically a 45-inch ultrawide version of the 27GR95QE. The extra screen space will set you back a cool $1,700 when it goes on sale next year. If you preorder the 27GR95QE or 45GR95QE before December 26th, LG will throw in a $200 RGB gaming pad with your purchase.

Before Trump-era sanctions made the company a non-player in the market, Huawei was briefly the world’s largest phone manufacturer, surpassing both Samsung and Apple in shipments. In a sign of how much it has fallen since then, Huawei announced this week it recently entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement with its biggest domestic rival. Oppo, the parent company of OnePlus and subsidiary of one of China’s largest electronics manufacturers, now has global rights to Huawei’s coveted 5G patents.

The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, but we have some idea of the money involved thanks to information Huawei has shared in the past. When the firm announced it was planning to monetize its patent portfolio more aggressively last year, it said it would charge phone makers a “reasonable” $2.50 per device to license its technologies. Huawei also said it expected to generate an additional $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion in revenue between 2019 and 2021 due to the move. When you consider Oppo and Vivo (both owned by China’s BBK Electronics) shipped more than 51 million smartphones last quarter, that’s a lot of money on the line.

At the same time, Oppo is obtaining access to some critical technologies. As of 2021, approximately 18.3 percent of Huawei’s 5G patents fell under the Standard Essential Patent (SEP) category, meaning they were considered critical to the 5G standard. At the time, Huawei had the most in-use 5G-related SEPs of any company in the world.

It will be interesting to see if the agreement draws interest from lawmakers in the US and other parts of the world. For much of the past decade, BBK has managed to stay under the radar of regulators and mainstream media in the way that Huawei and ZTE have not. The company’s segmented brand portfolio makes its footprint seem smaller than it is. In reality, it’s consistently been one of the largest and most important phone makers in the world.

Twitter has begun rolling out Community Notes to all of its users globally, the company announced on Saturday. Previously known as Birdwatch, the feature first debuted in 2021 under former CEO Jack Dorsey as means for the social media website to combat misinformation.

Community Notes takes a crowd-sourced approach to debunking misleading tweets. Moderators who are part of the program can append notes to tweets to add “context.” Regular users can then vote on whether they find the context “helpful.” Before today, only individuals in the US could see the notes. Twitter says it will start adding contributors from other regions soon.

Current company owner Elon Musk has positioned Community Notes as a critical element of his “Twitter 2.0” vision, claiming the feature will be “a gamechanger for improving accuracy on Twitter.” However, as with any crowd-sourced feature, there’s the potential for Community Notes to backfire if groups use the tool to promote partisan views.

The global rollout of Community Notes comes a day before the relaunch of Twitter Blue. Following a disastrous first attempt at paid account verification, Twitter announced on Saturday it would start rolling out its revamped subscription service again on Monday. This time around, subscribers will need to provide a number for verification purposes before the company will add a blue checkmark to their account. Additionally, users who change their handle, display name and profile photo will temporarily lose their blue checkmark while Twitter reviews their account.

NASA's Artemis 1 mission has returned to Earth following a successful trip around the Moon. On Saturday, at approximately 12:40PM ET, the agency's Orion crew vessel landed off the coast of Baja, California. On its way to the Pacific Ocean, Orion performed what’s known as a skip entry. After entering the Earth’s upper atmosphere, the crew vessel briefly used its own lift to “skip” back out before re-entering for the final descent. In doing so, it became the spacecraft designed to carry humans to carry out such a maneuver. 

Getting here wasn’t easy. NASA’s next-generation Space Launch System gave the agency plenty of headaches before it successfully carried Artemis 1 to space on November 16th. NASA spent much of the summer troubleshooting fuel leaks and engine problems. Come fall, Hurricane Ian and later tropical storm Nicole further delayed the launch of Artemis 1, but after all of that was said and done, the SLS produced one of the most memorable rocket launches in recent history. A nighttime flight saw the rocket lit up the Kennedy Space Center.         

More broadly, the conclusion of Artemis 1 caps off one of NASA's most successful years in recent memory.

Developing... 

If you recently bought an iPad and have been patiently waiting for the second-generation Apple Pencil to go on sale, now is your chance to buy one at a significant discount. Amazon has dropped the price of the stylus by 31 percent, making it $89 at the moment. That marks a return to an all-time low price for the Apple Pencil. Note that if you order today, it should arrive by Christmas.

At this point, there’s not much to say about Apple’s latest stylus. If you’re an artist or enjoy drawing, it’s a must-buy accessory. The second-generation model's pressure sensitivity allows you to add as much or as little detail to digital artwork as you want, and you can customize the double-tap feature to some extent. The Apple Pencil is also a great tool for photographers who rely on apps like Lightroom. Best of all, the stylus attaches magnetically to the iPad Pro and iPad Air for easy storage and charging. If you recently bought Apple’s new 2022 iPad, keep in mind the tablet is only compatible with the first-generation Apple Pencil.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.