The U.S. government has moved against allowing new telecommunications equipment from several Chinese tech giants to enter the United States over national security concerns.

The announcement comes from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which said on Friday that it had blocked the sale or import of equipment made by Huawei Technologies, ZTE, surveillance equipment maker Dahua Technology, video surveillance firm Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and telecommunications firm Hytera Communications. These official bans are the latest in the U.S. government's moves to protect Americans from unwanted spying by Chinese tech giants.

"These new rules are an important part of our ongoing actions to protect the American people from national security threats involving telecommunications," said FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement. There has been no comment by Washington or the majority of the now-banned companies at the time of reporting, with only Hikvision writing in a statement:

A group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs has failed miserably to attract the attention of the world's richest individual Elon Musk with a custom $600,000 state of the Tesla CEO's head.

The cryptocurrency team behind the project is Elon GOAT Token, which created the sculpture of Musk's head over the course of six months in a stunt to grab the billionaire's attention. The team behind the project spent $600,000 to create a 30-foot-long, 12,000-pound metal sculpture of Musk's head fashioned into a goat's body that is straddling a rocket. The statue was delivered to Tesla headquarters under what the creators called "GOATSGIVING".

Notably, Insider reports that the crypto team consists of Ashley Sansalone, along with Alec Wolvert and Richie Latimer, who all decided to follow through with the sculpture idea to get the attention of Musk, who would then acknowledge the stunt likely via Twitter, which would then directly increase the value of their cryptocurrency coin Elon GOAT Token. Furthermore, the Elon GOAT Token community expressed sadness and disappointment that Musk didn't recognize the crowd-funded statue existed.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk shared slides on his Twitter account regarding his plan for Twitter 2.0 and some analytics on Twitter usage.

The Twitter owner wrote that the four slides are from his Twitter company talk that he recently delivered. The slides showcased graphs comparing Twitter signups that show the average number of signups per day was 2 million as of November 16, which is an increase of 66% compared to the same week a year ago. Additionally, graphs showed active minutes hitting a seven-day average of 8 billion per day, which is an increase of 30% compared to the previous year.

The graphs illustrate record highs, and according to internal company data, hate speech impressions, along with reported impersonation, has reduced after spiking around the beginning of November. Musk's charts show that hate speech impressions, in particular, have dropped from a high of 10 million near the end of October to just above 2.5 million as of November 13. Additionally, these slides contain ideas that'll be implemented into Twitter 2.0, "The Everything App", and those are; encrypted DMs, long-form tweets, a relaunch of Blue Verified, and "Payments".

A newly published report from Media Matters America claims that half of Twitter's top advertisers have left the company in the last month.

The nonprofit media research organization published the report on November 22 that claims 50 of Twitter's top advertisers have either announced or stopped advertising on the social media platform entirely, with these top 50 advertisers representing close to $2 billion in advertising spending on Twitter since 2020. Notably, these advertisers, which have now purportedly backed away from Twitter, accounted for about $750 million in advertising in 2022.

Furthermore, as of November 21, there were approximately seven advertisers that are reducing spending on Twitter to what Media Matters claims is "close to nothing," and these advertisers have spent more than $255 million on Twitter since 2020 and about $118 million in 2022. The organization labeled most of the big brands in its list as "quiet quitters", the companies that reduced advertising spending on Twitter without making a public announcement or statement.

Artemis 1 launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on November 16, and according to officials, the Orion spacecraft has entered the Moon's orbit on Friday, November 25.

On Flight Day 10, NASA officials announced that Flight Controllers at the Johnson Space Center have successfully performed a burn that placed the Orion spacecraft into the Moon's orbit, entering into a distant retrograde orbit. Orion will remain in this orbit around the Moon for six days, where it will then exit the Moon's orbit and put itself back on course with a trip to Earth for a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on December 11.

NASA has taken to its blog and social channels to document the progress being made by Orion. According to NASA's Artemis 1 Flight Day 11, the Orion capsule broke the distance record for a spacecraft designed to carry humans to deep space and back to Earth. The previous record was set in 1970 by the Apollo 13 mission, where a spacecraft traveled 248,655 miles from Earth, and according to NASA, on November 28, the Orion spacecraft will reach a distance of 270,000 miles from Earth.

In the event that Twitter is banned from Android and iOS operating systems, Elon Musk says he will create an "alternative phone".

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO replied to a tweet from Liz Wheeler, host of The Liz Wheeler Show, where she suggested that Musk should create his own smartphone in the event that Apple and Google "boot" Twitter from their app stores. Wheeler goes on to write that "Half the country would happily ditch the biased, snooping iPhone & Android" and that since Musk "builds rockets to Mars," he should have the capabilities of easily producing a "silly little smartphone".

This tweet from Wheeler sparked a response from the SpaceX CEO, who wrote that he hopes "it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone". This isn't the first time Musk has discussed the possibility of an "alternative phone", with rumors long circulating about a possible mobile device called a "Tesla Pi Phone". However, these are simply just rumors that, at the moment, have no official confirmation or source to back them up.

A Twitter employee has acquired legal documentation that prevents Elon Musk from firing her from her position at the company.

Sinead McSweeney

A new report from The Irish Times states that Sinead McSweeney, Twitter's Ireland-based global vice president of public policy, has secured a temporary injunction that stops Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk from firing her following McSweeney being locked out of work accounts as well as Twitter's Dublin office. McSweeney didn't respond to Musk's company-wide email that posed an ultimatum to Twitter employees requiring them to accept longer/harder working hours with higher standards or receive three months' severance.

The lack of response from McSweeney meant she was locked out of work accounts and Twitter's office. The report states that McSweeney didn't respond to the email or click "yes" on the link provided in Musk's email, as she believed Musk's severance package violated her current "contractual entitlements". The email was sent out on November 16, with Musk giving employees about 36 hours to respond. McSweeney received an email on November 18 informing her of her "voluntary resignation" despite her intention to stay at the company.

CPU-Z has been updated with the latest version of the software supporting a bunch of unreleased Intel 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs, including a bunch of new HX-series CPUs that are on their way.

The new CPU-Z v2.03.1 update supports a slew of new Intel CPUs but leaves new AMD CPUs waiting for support in CPU-Z, including the rumored 55W and 45W SKUs, and their respective H, HK, and HX-series CPUs. The new flagship mobile beast Core i9-13900HK is on the list, which is a desktop-class (BGA) series that will drop at CES 2023 inside of next-gen gaming laptops.

In full, the new CPU-Z now supports the Intel Core i9-13900HK, Intel Core i7 13700H/HX, Intel Core i5-13650HX

Intel Core i5-13620H, Intel Core i5-13500H/HX, Intel Core i5-13450HX, Intel Core i5-13420H, and finally, the Intel Celeron 7305. Out of this list, the Core i7-13700H and Core i5-13500H are seen for the first time, whereas until now we've only seen their HK and HX variants.

Intel only just launched its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" family of CPUs but there is far more to come, with a big tease of the new flagship Core i9-13900KS that will compete against AMD's upcoming Zen 4 range of CPUs with second-gen 3D V-Cache technology attached.

Intel's upcoming Core i9-13900KS, and other new Raptor Lake CPUs coming (source: PC-Canada)

The new Intel Core i9-13900KS processor will be unleashed at CES 2023 alongside some new SKUs for the Raptor Lake CPU family, but there's also news that some of those CPUs will be using an older die based on the Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPU family.

A new listing as popped up on PC-Canada which has listed the Intel Core i9-13900KS processor for $972 CAD, which converts to around $722 USD or so. But, what makes the Core i9-13900KS so special? Well, that "S" stands for something, and that "S" is serious speed: the first ever consumer CPU with a CPU frequency of 6.0GHz out of the box, oh yeah.

ASRock has just unveiled something rather new with the introduction of its new Side Panel Kit, which is a 13.3-inch LCD that you can install into the side panel of your PC... awesome.

The new ASRock Side Panel Kit

The new ASRock Side Panel Kit is a 13.3-inch IPS-based display with a native 1920 x 1080 (1080p) resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio, and 60Hz refresh rate. The new side panel kit measures in at 293.76 x 165.24 (H x V) with an anti-glare LED that has a maximum brightness of 300 cd per m2, and a contrast ratio of 800:1.

If you don't have the space for another monitor on your desk and really wanted one, the 13.3-inch IPS panel will be a great addition to your PC, whether it's being used for productivity, or just to show your PC off in a totally new way. If you've got RGB lighting and a wicked gaming PC setup, obviously the new ASRock Side Panel Kit is going to hide that, but you already knew that.