News from johnpatrick.com

A really big week is coming up for Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken. They arrived in Florida this week to prepare for their launch into space in Crew Dragon atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The launch will make space history as the first private launch vehicle to put humans into orbit. The mission will be the first NASA spaceflight to depart from American soil since NASA retired its space shuttle fleet in July 2011. I can’t wait to watch the proceedings. NASA officials announced on Friday there were no showstoppers found during a crucial flight readiness review (FRR) for SpaceX’s Demo-2 mission.

Reminder: The fireside chat with Bob Reby, “How to Strengthen Our Democracy in Troubling Times”, will be happening in one week. You can register here.

The Zoom conference will be on May 28, 2020 6:00 PM Eastern. Join from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device.

Bob and I will discuss the following :

Voting with Paper or Internet: Which is more secure, accurate, private and verifiable?
How the U.S. can use blockchain technology to safeguard ballots from hackers and foreign adversaries
Cautionary Case Studies: What went wrong and how mistakes could have been avoided
Success Stories: Internet voting in foreign countries and pilot programs in U.S. states

We look forward to seeing you there!

The How We Feel app continues to gain momentum. States are hiring people to be contact tracers. However, if we all donate our non-personally-identifiable data to help scientists track the virus, it may prove a digital approach can work, or at least help. The app is completely private. No login required. If you don’t have the app yet, get it here for Apple or here for Android.

As of mid-afternoon Friday, Tesla market capitalization is up to $152 billion. The five giant tech company market caps continued to climb. All five companies are global, but to put their massive valuation into perspective, it now represents 23% of the market cap of the U.S. S&P 500. Shareholders are happy but government regulators and politicians are gearing up for new regulations and anti-trust hearings. I believe pressure on big tech will continue to mount.

MAGFA Market Cap (05/21/20 3:30 PM)
Microsoft	$1.387	Trillion
Apple	$1.377	Trillion
Google	$0.963	Trillion
Facebook	$0.668	Trillion
Amazon	$1.214	Trillion

Total	$5.608	Trillion

S&P 500 4/30/20	$24.140	Trillion

MAGFA	23%

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