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Carbon Neutral Update

Apple Inc. has pledged to become carbon neutral across its business, including its mostly overseas supply chain, within the next 10 years. I believe many more major companies will rearrange its operations to battle climate change.

The iPhone maker said Tuesday its new commitment means, by 2030, every Apple device sold will have been produced with no net release of carbon into the atmosphere. The company plans to reduce its emissions by 75% and develop carbon-removal solutions for the remaining 25% of its footprint. I doubt if the 25% will occur by donations to the Arbor Tree Foundation. I look forward to learning what their innovative carbon-removal solutions will be.

The Straight Scoop On Covid-19, Masks, and Vaccines

Dr. Anthony Fauci will be 80 in December. I’ll be 75 in ten days. Wish my knees and shoulders were as good as his. If you missed the Mark Zuckerberg interview of Dr. Fauci, I highly recommend viewing it. Just click on his picture to the left. They discussed the status, how to reset, importance of masks, a plead for young people to take more social responsibility, therapeutics, and vaccine development.

Independent Testing Lab Approves Voatz for US Elections

Voatz‘s mobile voting platform has received an important stamp of approval. The company announced this week an independent Voting System Test Laboratory has reviewed the Voatz mobile voting solution and found it to be compliant with the requirements for United States voting systems.

The Voatz platform is essentially a mobile app for electronic voting in elections. It uses blockchain ledger technology to ensure voting records cannot be tampered with. It uses biometric technology such as Apple’s Touch ID and Face ID for authentication.

Voatz, a Boston startup says its solution has been used in 67 elections spanning across cities, counties, universities, nonprofits, and political parties. At the end of June, for example, Voatz was used for voting in the Republican Party of South Dakota’s virtual convention.

SpaceX Blasts Off Brilliantly

It was a great week for SpaceX as it used its Falcon 9 rocket to lift a Korean communications satellite into orbit. The stage 1 Falcon booster safely returned to Earth and landed on the bullseye of a SpaceX barge 350 miles off the coast of Florida. This is the same booster which had taken astronauts aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. For an encore, SpaceX was able to catch the two $6 million fairings, which returned to Earth with parachutes, in nets aboard two SpaceX boats. SpaceX continues to do things many have said were impossible. Next week we can watch the return of the astronauts from the ISS to Earth.

Wall Street and the MAGFA Stocks

The tech heavyweights pulled down the market today. As of Friday’s close, the market value of all the stocks I have been reporting on declined except for Amazon, now at $1.5 trillion. Caribbean. Apple and Tesla down but continue on a trajectory to the moon.

The five giant tech company market caps still represent 25% of the market cap of the U.S. S&P 500. Still mind boggling. Congress is on their trail and hearings will start Monday.

News service Axios reported the key points each of the big four tech CEOs are expected to make during their virtual testimonies Monday at an antitrust hearing by the House Judiciary Committee.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: Congress should pass better laws. Let’s work together and do that! Axios said Zuckerberg will likely argue Congress should write laws to bolster election security and establish consistent online privacy standards.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai:We won search by doing it well — why punish us for that? Axios says Google doesn’t dispute its clear dominance in search, nor of certain corners of the online advertising market, but it contends digital advertising is in fact wildly competitive.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos:We’re big because we’ve always given users what they want — fast delivery, wide selection and good prices. Axios says Bezos is likely to point to Amazon’s ability to get goods to Americans’ homes during the pandemic as a public service.
Apple CEO Tim Cook: Our App Store creates opportunity for countless developers — and Google’s Android controls more of the smartphone market, anyway. Axios says Apple has faced criticism for the way it develops and features its own apps which compete with third-party apps. Axios says to expect Cook to cite the size and vitality of the app market and the continued enthusiasm of Apple’s customers.

Note: My father gave me the following investment advice many years ago, “Don’t give any, and don’t take any.” Wise man. I am not recommending buying or selling any of the stocks, startups, crypto, or indexes I write about.