It’s another Thursday, which means there are four complete days until the 2020 Presidential Election. A lot of talk is made about this being the most important election of our generation, but this time there appears to a lot of anxiety in both camps. Foreign elements have been working around the clock to tamper with the electorate and sow social discord by spreading fake news and fake information. If a few powerful nations are that concerned with the outcome of our presidential election and are investing all of this time and effort to affect the outcome; shouldn’t that make us appreciate our position more and possibly band together even while voting for different people.

I’m a pollyanna.

Anyway, here’s another week of tech talk with Mark Starling and the First News 570 crew. This week, the big social media CEOs testify before Congress again, CoinBase gets in the crypto payments game, and Google Play Music gives up the ghost. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.

SOCIAL MEDIA HONCHOS TESTIFY BEFORE CONGRESS, AGAIN

You’d think Zuckerberg and the CEOs of Twitter and Google love going before Congress and ducking questions. Yesterday, the CEOs appeared before Congress to discuss a portion of the telecommunications law, Section 230. Section 230 allows social media companies to operate unimpinged when their users post anything on their platforms. Democrats and Republicans are both upset with the networks. Democrats are upset because they feel social networks allow users to post outright lies. Republicans are upset with them because they think the networks censor conservative speech. Facebook, Google, and Twitter should tread carefully however, as the proverb goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

CRYPTOBANK COINBASE OFFERS US ACCOUNT HOLDERS VISA DEBIT OPTION

We’re approaching a time where the line between virtual money and real money is blurring. After being available in Europe, CoinBase is giving US customers the ability to pay for products using cryptocurrency. The CoinBase VISA debit card can be linked with one or more cryptocurrencies in an account. Like PayPal’s upcoming service, CoinBase will conduct the transaction using dollars with the merchant, and clear the converted amount of crypto. I’m still buying BitCoin.

EL GOOG END GOOGLE PLAY MUSIC AFTER 10 YEARS

The music industry is still one of the hard to crack industries. EVERYONE loves music, yet no one likes to buy it. It’s hard to license, artists don’t make much money, and the labels make it rain. This week, Google is decommissioning Google Play Music and is asking users to turn their sights to YouTube Music, during the same week GitHub removes the YouTube ripping app, youtube-dl, from its servers. When it comes to music, it seems the only non-label companies making money are Apple and Amazon which are still selling individual albums and singles via MP3s. Subscription services like Spotify have yet to turn a profit, and other service, GP Music bytes the dust.