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Roger Morais
Roger Morais is a Portuguese-American journalist and web developer who founded RogerLe.com in 1996. He spent ten years at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, where he was a senior web developer, and now travels Europe full-time by motorhome. He decides what morais.news covers and approves every piece before it is published.
Latest from Roger
100 pieces
NASA's Perseverance rover sets record for distance driven on another world
The Mars rover reached 45.22 kilometers of total driving on Oct. 11, 2026, according to ScienceDaily, after pausing near the mark to study ancient rocks.
All five DNA and RNA nucleobases found in samples from asteroid Ryugu, study reports
Japanese scientists report finding all five nucleobases in material returned by the Hayabusa2 mission, adding to evidence that ingredients for life were widespread in space.
Portugal and the US pledge closer economic ties and praise growing US role in the Azores
A joint statement after the 53rd Standing Bilateral Commission also confirmed a first CEO Forum meeting in Lisbon on 10 November, according to Observador.
Anthropic filing shows compute costs taking a bigger share of revenue, TechCrunch reports
An updated IPO filing shows revenue rising to $17 billion in the third quarter while compute used 58% of it, up from 48%, according to TechCrunch.
Democrats win control of House and Senate in midterms, flipping seats in Republican states
Democrats won Senate races in Kansas, Texas, Iowa, Ohio and North Carolina. Some races, including Alaska's Senate contest, were still unresolved overnight.
Study says Van Gogh's The Starry Night shows the real sky over Saint-Rémy
South Korean researchers matched the painting's Moon, Venus and star cluster to the actual 1889 sky and say it fits a July date, Universe Today reported.
Hubble and Webb find 27 faint objects beyond Neptune that appear to keep traces of their origins
Even the smallest icy bodies in the survey seem to have changed little since the solar system formed, ScienceDaily reported, citing NASA material.
European foreign policy figures warn a Democratic midterm win may not ease US-Europe tensions
Former diplomats and analysts quoted by Politico say a Congress run by Democrats could push Trump to focus on trade and foreign policy, with tougher demands on Europe.
Starlink moves to location-based pricing, with some Residential bills up about 20 percent
RVtravel, citing PCMag, reports quarterly price reviews tied to local demand, a change that could affect RVers who move Residential service between seasonal sites.
Ohio State researchers present AI model to help choose lunar landing sites
The LUMINA framework weighs terrain hazards, water ice and scientific value to assess candidate sites on the Moon, according to Universe Today.
SpaceX reportedly seeks to buy Boost Mobile from EchoStar
TechCrunch, citing The Washington Post, reports that Elon Musk talked to EchoStar's chairman about a deal that could combine Starlink satellites with cell tower coverage.
Anthropic renames Claude Max plans and drops five-hour limit on $200 Ultra tier
The $200 plan, now called Ultra, no longer has a five-hour cap for verified accounts, but its pricing page lists ten times Pro usage a week, The Next Web reported.
Squarespace to cut about 19% of its workforce, around 300 jobs
The website builder says it is restructuring to simplify operations, according to TechCrunch, as AI tools reshape how websites are made.
SUSE to cut about 10% of its workforce, chief executive cites AI and automation
The German Linux company's chief executive told staff that some roles are no longer needed, according to The Next Web. The roles being cut have not been named.
Federal judge dismisses Trump administration lawsuit seeking Harvard admissions data
A judge in Boston ruled the Justice Department skipped legally required steps, but said the decision does not settle whether Harvard must eventually hand over applicant data.
Cyber-attack hits supermarket fridges and freezers in seven European countries
The BBC reports that dozens of shops in Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland had refrigeration units remotely switched to defrost.
US midterms on track to be the most expensive campaign on record
Open Secrets projects nearly $12bn in total spending, much of it from Super Pacs, with Elon Musk the largest individual donor.
Anthropic filing says it may soon meet its own threshold for AI-accelerated progress
New risk language in Anthropic's revised IPO filing warns that using AI to build AI could outpace its safety work, according to TechCrunch.
NASA asks companies for ideas on boosting, servicing or retiring the Hubble Space Telescope
A Request for Information issued Oct. 29 asks industry about raising Hubble's orbit, upgrading it, or bringing it down safely at the end of its mission.
Overlooked heavy neutrino may help explain why matter survived the Big Bang, study proposes
Researchers in Southampton and Kanpur say a long-lived, weakly interacting particle could have shaped the early imbalance between matter and antimatter.
Stored RVs still face theft, weather and parking-lot damage, RVtravel warns owners
As camping season ends, RVtravel advises owners to check with lenders and insurers before reducing or canceling coverage on rigs in storage.
Serbia's Vučić ousted by student movement months after Orbán's fall in Hungary
The BBC reports close parallels between the two defeats, including Hungarian activists who trained Serbian election monitors.
RVers describe diesel costs near $1 a mile and construction crews filling campgrounds
A reader column on RVtravel.com collects accounts of high fuel costs, full parks in Iowa and reserved sites left empty by no-shows.
Spacewalkers install seventh new solar array on International Space Station
NASA's Anil Menon and the Canadian Space Agency's Joshua Kutryk spent more than seven hours outside the station. One array is left to install.
Judge dismisses Trump's $10bn lawsuit against Wall Street Journal over Epstein birthday book
A US judge threw out the defamation case with prejudice, ruling that it ran counter to the First Amendment, the BBC reported.
OpenAI considers calling its data centers 'AI compute campuses'
The idea is one of several proposals OpenAI's global affairs chief described for a public push planned for after the midterm elections
Canada and EU unveil Alliance for the Future, open to other like-minded countries
At a Montreal summit, Mark Carney and Ursula von der Leyen announced a deeper partnership covering trade, AI and support for Ukraine, The Guardian reported.
Radio observations add to evidence that Betelgeuse has a close companion star
A study using the VLA and ALMA found Betelgeuse's atmosphere turns egg-shaped on a cycle, The companion still has not been confirmed.
Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic back one AI training opt-out for websites
A draft rule would let sites block generative AI training with one robots.txt entry, The Next Web reported. Rollout dates vary, and the IETF has not endorsed the draft.
Judge appoints special master to probe whether White House officials lied about East Potomac Park golf course
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ordered the investigation after a contentious hearing on Friday.
Lula wins Brazil runoff as a WhatsApp group of 10 million backers draws attention
A New Republic column credits "Lula's Army," a volunteer messaging group, with helping turn a close race into a clear win over Flávio Bolsonaro.
Meteorite found in the Sahara is one of the oldest pieces of Mars ever found, NASA-funded study says
Scientists dated minerals in Teghaza 001, found in 2022, and say the rock formed more than 4.1 billion years ago and records water interacting with ancient Martian crust.
Tech stocks fall as investors question Big Tech's AI spending
Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft plan more than $740 billion in capital spending this year, and TechCrunch reports that investors are growing nervous about the cost.
Yellowstone gets $105 million donation from Blackstone-backed energy firm Tallgrass
RVtravel reports the gift is the largest on record for a National Park, and it has drawn questions because of the donor's data center and political ties.
Missouri to end free camping on conservation areas with $5 permit starting March 2027
State conservation officials cite trash, overstays and vandalism. Campers will need a permit and a name label on every tent or RV.
Canada accepts EU offer of "associate membership," with terms due by June 2027
Politico reports that Mark Carney endorsed the proposal after a summit in Montreal. Its cost and final shape are still undecided, and trade disputes remain open.
Trump team arranged private jet for Flávio Bolsonaro's flight to the US, report says
The New Republic, citing The New York Times, reports the defeated Brazilian candidate reached Miami on special parole as he faced a Supreme Court order to surrender his passport.
Pope Leo XIV casts mail-in ballot in Illinois, the first pope to vote in a US election
The Chicago-born pontiff, who has clashed with President Trump, voted in the midterms ahead of election day on 3 November.
FCC approves Amazon Leo's $11.5bn purchase of Globalstar, satellite provider behind iPhone SOS
The regulator cleared the transfer of Globalstar's mobile-satellite spectrum, ending its review of a deal central to Amazon's direct-to-device plans.
Study rules out Jupiter-sized planets in nearby 70 Ophiuchi star system
Researchers say a stellar wobble that once suggested a giant planet came from activity on the stars. Smaller worlds may still be there.
Keyless car theft case in St. Louis prompts warning for RV owners about tow vehicles
A Missouri car owner suspects a key fob relay attack after her locked car vanished. RVtravel.com says RVers with trucks parked beside their rigs should check their keyless systems.
Anthropic is SpaceX's largest customer, The Next Web reports, citing Bloomberg
The AI company made up about 34.5% of SpaceX's third-quarter revenue, putting it ahead of the US government, according to a report based on one unnamed source.
Mistral releases weights for its trillion-parameter Mistral Large 4 model, pitching it for cyber defense
TechCrunch reports the French company says businesses and governments can now download and run the model themselves to detect and respond to threats.
Fed holds rates steady as two officials, including Lisa Cook, dissent in favor of a hike
Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack and Governor Lisa Cook wanted a quarter-point increase,, a week before the midterm elections.
Portuguese vets deliver petition to parliament seeking cut in VAT on pet care from 23% to 6%
The Portuguese Veterinary Association says more than 8,000 people signed, and the petition must be debated once the signatures are validated, Portugal Resident reported.
Seven tankers carrying Russian diesel head for US, but unloading is uncertain
Greenpeace tracked the ships carrying an estimated 288,000 tonnes of diesel under a Trump-Putin deal, as lawmakers and a governor threaten to block delivery.
Leap second to be scrapped from 2027, letting clocks drift up to an hour from Earth's rotation
A resolution adopted at a conference in Versailles ends the leap second. Atomic time and Earth's rotation may drift apart by up to an hour.
Lippert to end ConnectAnywhere remote service as RV electronics raise long-term repair questions
Lippert's OneControl will keep working locally, but the change shows how features in connected RVs can reach the end of their supported life, RVtravel.com reports.
EU backs away from 'associate member' offer to Canada as Montreal summit opens
A draft summit statement seen by The Guardian offers Canada "an ever closer association" with the EU instead, after member states objected.
Anthropic weighs setting aside up to 20% of IPO shares for retail as Warren demands answers
A single report from The Next Web, citing Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, describes retail plans and a senator's letter on the AI company's filing.
Serbian opposition wins outright majority, ending Vučić's long role as the EU's main contact
Politico reports that the Student List, a movement that grew out of protests, plans to reset Serbia's ties with Brussels but has not named EU membership as an immediate goal.
Thousands protest outside Portugal's parliament over housing and cost of living during budget debate
Protesters filled the square outside parliament as MPs debated the 2027 State Budget, and several Socialist MPs joined the crowd, Portugal Resident reported.
Amazon set to be the biggest winner of Anthropic's IPO,
The AI company's S-1 shows venture backers holding small stakes, while Amazon's convertible notes have grown in value to tens of billions of dollars.
Portugal opens new Porto migrant centre wing, says it now exceeds EU benchmark for places
An 80-bed modular wing in Porto brings Portugal's capacity for irregular migrants to 171, above a European benchmark of 102, Portugal Resident reports.
Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to around 60,000 employees
The company confirmed the offer to TechCrunch. It covers select teams in the US, Canada, India and the UK, and the terms are said to be similar to standard severance.
OpenAI releases GPT-6.1 Terra, a cheaper model built to handle routine computer work
The model can read a screen and click, type and switch between apps, The Next Web reported. Its performance figures come from OpenAI's own testing.
Ancient Chinese record of 709 BCE eclipse sharpens estimate of Earth's past rotation
Researchers corrected the location of ancient Qufu by about eight kilometers and say a later text may describe the solar corona, ScienceDaily reported.
Europe's CRISTAL ice-monitoring satellite finishes assembly and passes first solar wing test
ESA says the polar ice satellite is moving into environmental testing ahead of a launch targeted for late 2027 to early 2028.
Anthropic IPO filing shows big customers buying more of its products, TechCrunch reports
More than half of Anthropic's customers spending at least $100,000 a year now use more than one of its products, according to TechCrunch's reading of the company's S-1.
Astronomers report possible first moon beyond the Solar System, circling a brown dwarf
A team using ESO's Very Large Telescope says it has found a giant object orbiting a brown dwarf in the CD-35 2722 system. The finding has not been confirmed.
Apollo economist says AI has delivered 'zero financial payoff' to companies outside tech
Torsten Slok says profit margins and revenue per worker look flat at large US companies outside the biggest tech firms, TechCrunch reported.
Guide points RVing snowbirds to desert camping areas beyond Quartzsite's La Posa
RVtravel describes several other BLM Long-Term Visitor Areas where one seasonal permit covers winter boondocking in Arizona and California.
Satellite data suggest 2026 El Niño could rival or exceed the strong 1997-98 event
NASA Earth Observatory compared sea level maps from 1997 and 2026 and found similar patterns, but a NASA scientist says the effects this winter are still uncertain.
Analyst says far-right general Vannacci poses growing threat to Meloni's coalition ahead of 2027 vote
An opinion piece in The Guardian argues that Roberto Vannacci's new National Future party is pulling support from the League and boxing Giorgia Meloni in on migration.
PHP flaws called PHP2Shell set off global patching rush as first attacks are confirmed
Two old bugs in PHP could let attackers take over unpatched servers without a password, TechCrunch reported. Patches came out Wednesday, but many systems are still exposed.
Burnham calls for "honest discussion" on return of free movement with EU
The prime minister says European migration has changed since Brexit as he prepares to set out options for UK-EU ties ahead of a Brussels summit on 20 November.
Brazil's changing working class pulls votes away from Lula ahead of run-off, BBC reports
A former industrial city that backed Lula in 2022 switched to Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round, as factory jobs gave way to service and gig work.
RVer proposes refundable $100 booking fee to curb campground no-shows, RVtravel reports
A reader's idea to charge campers $100 they lose only if they never show up appeared in a column asking whether slower RV sales have made campsites easier to find.
Bennu samples suggest the asteroid formed from mixed dust near the early Solar System's water-ice line
A chemical analysis by ETH Zurich researchers challenges the idea that Bennu came from the outer Solar System and points to a role for Jupiter, ScienceDaily reports.
Cyberattack on Portugal's national firefighters' register exposes personal data
Portugal's civil protection authority confirmed unauthorised access to a database that holds about 60,000 records, Portugal Resident reported.
Spain's opposition PP draws outrage with deepfake campaign video ahead of election
The ad used AI likenesses of people linked to Pedro Sánchez's Socialist party, including his wife, and one of them has filed a legal challenge, The Guardian reported.
Largest supernova catalog adds evidence that dark energy may change over time
A team led by the University of Queensland combined 2,884 exploding white dwarf stars into one dataset, and it departs from cosmology's standard model.
OpenAI says it will stop training frontier models on the live internet, TechCrunch reports
The company says it will use cached and simulated copies of the web instead. It cites a September incident in which a model reached the internet through a misconfiguration.
Moonshot releases Kimi K3.1 Pro on its API and promises open weights by Nov 4
An independent benchmark scored the model behind only Claude Opus 5.5, Simon Willison reported. The weights have not been released yet.
Researchers name 27 giant exoplanets as targets for planned private Lazuli Space Telescope
A new target list for Lazuli's ExtraSolar Coronagraph focuses on known giant planets that could be imaged by the starlight they reflect.
Marsquake traced to active fault deep beneath Valles Marineris, study finds
Researchers say a 2021 quake recorded by NASA's InSight lander came from ancient faults slipping beneath Mars' largest canyon system.
Late mail ballots rose sharply in rural areas of five states during primaries, report says
The New Republic, citing ProPublica, links the late ballots to Postal Service changes. The USPS says it has taken steps to avoid delays in November.
Mount Shasta rescue prompts warning to RVers about AI trip planning
Three hikers who planned their climb with Google's Gemini chatbot needed rescue, RVtravel reported, citing High Country News.
Google privacy policy update opens door to Gmail and Photos data shaping ads in AI search
Ars Technica reports the change involves data users share through Personal Intelligence. Google says ads will not be "based directly" on inboxes or photo libraries.
NASA safety adviser cites estimate of 22 Starship flights to fuel a Moon lander; Musk says it is too high
A member of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel gave the figure at a quarterly meeting. Elon Musk replied that the real number will be closer to 6 to 8.
Quad9 says it will stop serving users in France after court ruling in beIN case
The Swiss nonprofit DNS provider says it will not block domains named by the sports broadcaster and will leave France on November 24 instead.
Amazon says hackers targeted PHP flaw four days before it was made public
US and UK authorities urged organizations to patch two PHP vulnerabilities found with help from AI models, according to a report published by Ars Technica.
Anthropic says Claude produced formal proofs that 123 open-source libraries' fuzz tests cannot crash
The company reports its model checked compiled code at the assembly level and found hundreds of bugs along the way, including some that years of testing had missed.
Chiricahua in Arizona becomes the 64th US national park
The former national monument in southeastern Arizona was upgraded under a law signed on October 20, according to RVtravel.com.
Portuguese councils and hospitals among 29 public bodies running outdated website software
A consultancy found unsupported PHP versions on public-sector sites as an international alert spread over two critical flaws, Portugal Resident reported.
Love's plans to grow its RV stop network to 200 locations by early 2028
The travel stop chain runs 137 RV stops in 37 states and has added tires, batteries and oil services, RVtravel.com reported, citing Convenience Store News.
German court says Google's aerial views of a private home break privacy law
A Frankfurt court called the overhead imagery on Google Earth and Maps "spying", The Next Web reported. Google says it will appeal.
OpenAI's GPT models are coming to Google Cloud and Google's Antigravity coding tool
According to Ars Technica, OpenAI's GPT 6 and 6.1 models will run on Google's infrastructure. They are rolling out first in a private preview for select enterprise customers.
Xbox tests pay-by-the-hour cloud streaming for games players already own
Microsoft's Cloud Playtime packs cost 24 to 40 cents per hour, according to Ars Technica, and are now available to Xbox Insiders.
Anthropic launches Claude Duet, an agent app for professionals and small businesses
According to TechCrunch, the app can run tasks in the background, suggest actions and make purchases with user approval. It is in research preview behind a waitlist.
Exeter train delay blamed on a solar storm was in 1848, not 1841, researchers say
A study finds a dating error in an 1871 account, so the Exeter incident is no longer the earliest known case of space weather disrupting technology.
Golf ball-sized hail hits Arizona, and RV owners are told to check their roofs
The October 21 storms shattered windows in north Phoenix. RVtravel.com warns that RV roofs and rooftop equipment can have hidden damage that leaks later.
Claude Duet, an assistant that works in the background, opens as a US research preview with a waitlist
Claude's product page says Duet sends morning briefs, handles tasks it receives by message and asks for approval before sending messages or making payments.
Behind the Texas State Fair midway, an RV park houses the workers who run the fair
RV City, a temporary park on the Dallas fairgrounds, is home for weeks to ride operators, game workers and food vendors, RVtravel reported.
Attorney General Todd Blanche says he works "for President Trump," rejects idea of DOJ independence
On a New York Post podcast, Blanche called the separation between the Justice Department and the White House a misperception, The New Republic reported.
FCC chair Brendan Carr warns broadcasters against airing "fake polls" before midterms
Carr says airing fabricated polls could break broadcast license rules. Former FCC chairs call the warning an attempt at censorship.
AfD seeks first far-right state premier in Saxony-Anhalt as Merz's CDU fears defections
The December vote in the eastern German state is a major test for Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his hold over his own party, Politico reports.
Search for nearby isolated black holes finds Gaia candidates, but no supporting signals
Researchers found five possible black holes within about 50 light-years of the Sun, but infrared and radio checks suggest they are unlikely to be real.
Eight compromised TLS certificates from eMudhra put security teams on alert
Ars Technica reports that the keys behind eight intermediate certificates were so weak that anyone could have used them to create trusted credentials for any website.
