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The majority of people in the world are illiterate -- including myself. No, I am not talking about being unable to read or write English or another language, but instead, the inability to code. Look, not everyone needs coding skills -- many jobs don't require it. However, as the workforce changes, and blue collar jobs disappear to automation and robots, the ability to code will be essential. And so, it is highly recommended that young folks get into coding as soon as possible -- the younger the better. After all, even if they later choose a career that doesn't involve coding, there is no downside to knowing how, right?

Today, the GNOME Foundation announces that it has partnered with Endless to launch a brand new "Coding Education Challenge." This is a great way to encourage both students and educators to investigate coding. While participation should be fun and educational, there is plenty of money to be had too. How much? A half million dollars!

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The Magecart JavaScript attack that captures online payment information has been around since 2016. A new study for Arxan Technologies produced by Aite Group takes a detailed look at the attack.

This research follows the trail of servers compromised by Magecart groups, as well as the collection servers to which the sites were actively sending stolen credit card data, in an effort to examine commonalities between victim websites and the tactics, techniques, and procedures used to compromise the servers.

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Fairphone is not a new name in the smartphone market, but it's not one that everyone is aware of. The company has a strong ethical and environmental stance, producing handsets that are gentle on the environment, the people producing them, and are easily repaired.

Now the company has announced the Fairphone 3. Due for release next month, the Android handset is a decent mid-ranger which is likely to attract more interest than its two predecessors. So what's all the fuss about?

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Organizations are going global and their infrastructures, thanks to the cloud, are going global as well. Today, mid-sized and even small companies are doing business on a global stage. Whether this global growth takes place by opening new offices or by acquiring them, one of the thorniest challenges is enabling collaboration between them, because it requires sharing large, unstructured data and application files across vast distances. And this task only becomes more complex and difficult as both files and the number of people who need to work with them simultaneously grow larger. This shift toward more companies going global creates a distinct need.

The traditional IT infrastructure -- one in which the corporate data center is located at the headquarters -- is not at all suited for providing collaboration with large files at scale. What's required is a new, disruptive technology category, with platforms that combine the control and performance of network attached storage (NAS) with the unlimited capacity and economy of the cloud.

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Facebook's plans to venture into the world of cryptocurrencies has proved highly controversial, but the social media giant is plowing on regardless. The company and the partners it is working with on Libra have launched a public bug bounty program, offering pay-outs of up to $10,000 per bug.

Announced by the Libra Association, the aim of the Libra Bug Bounty Program is to "strengthen the security of the blockchain". The association wants to track down " security and privacy issues and vulnerabilities".

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Worries about privacy in Windows 10 show no signs of abating, with Europe expressing ongoing concerns about Microsoft's data gathering and telemetry.

Having already asked Microsoft to make modifications to Windows, the Dutch data protection agency (DPA) has since looked into what changes the company has implemented. Having found "new, potentially unlawful, instances of personal data processing", the agency is calling for an investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), Microsoft's lead EU privacy regulator.

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Jony Ive recently left Apple. The man was considered by many to be the top computer designer. Other people, including yours truly, thought Panos Panay of the Surface team was the superior designer. Well, with Ive gone, there is no longer any debate to be had -- Panay is undeniably the "top dog" and in a league of his own.

Apple will be holding an event next month, where the company is expected to not only unveil new iPhones and iPads, but also, a new MacBook Pro. And yeah, a new laptop from Apple is exciting stuff, but let's be honest -- it will probably just be an evolutionary design. Rumors suggest a MacBook Pro with a bigger screen and a huge price tag. True innovation seems to be coming from Microsoft lately, and this October, Panos Panay and his Surface team will unveil new devices in New York City.

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Would you take information from your employer to help you get a job at a competitor? 24 percent would according to a new survey of almost 500 IT professionals carried out at Blackhat USA 2019.

The survey by behavior-based security specialist Gurucul finds that managed service providers (34 percent) and developers (30 percent) pose the leading sources of third party risk, and that if someone was to commit fraud it would most likely occur in the finance department (32 percent).

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SMBs around the world continue to cite budget constraints, paired with a lack of time and personnel to research new security threats, as the main obstacles facing the implementation of their IT security according to a new report.

The study from Untangle Inc studied over 300 SMBs, compiling data on budget and resource constraints, breaches, IT infrastructure, cloud adoption and more.

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Believe it or not, many people still use 1080p. Hell, I am writing this on an 11.6-inch Chromebook with a 720p screen. Madness, right? Not really. I mean, not everyone needs the latest and greatest. Truth be told, I own a 4K television, but I have almost no UHD content. Why did I buy it then? The price wasn't much different from 1080p sets.

While many of us are barely taking advantage of 4K properly, manufacturers are continually pushing boundaries. There are already displays that exceed UHD. In particular, you can get an iMac with 5K for instance, or if you have a spare $70,000 lying about, you could buy this 98-inch 8K Sony TV.

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Google has a diversity problem. Whereas the company's mobile app offerings were once colorful and full of highlights, more recent iterations -- like the newly released version 16 of the Google Play Store -- have been thoroughly and deliberately "whitewashed." Gone is the inclusive rainbow of headers that delineated each app type. In its place, a monochromatic sea of pure whiteness.

The transition is jarring -- and a bit intimidating. As someone who is married to a "person of color" I find the loss of background hue to be disquieting. The notion that it is better to suppress diversity of content in the name of "consistency" or "visual clarity" strikes me as downright bigoted. By ignoring the unique contributions that categories like "Movies" and "Games" have made to the overall Google landscape, you slight those behind the content that drives them.

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The BBC is working on a digital assistant to rival the likes of Siri and Alexa. Due to launch in 2020, the system goes by the name Beeb, and is being developed to handle regional accents better than current assistants.

The corporation has no plans -- for now at least -- to release a physical product along the lines of Google Home, as Beeb is destined to be used to allow people to use their voices to interact with online services and search for shows.

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Apple has released an update to iOS 12.4, plugging a vulnerability that had been reintroduced which allowed for jailbreaking.

iOS 12.4.1 repatches a security flaw which Apple previously fixed and then, inexplicably or accidentally, unpatched. iPhone owners now face a dilemma: upgrade to iOS 12.4.1 and have the most up-to-date, secure operating system, or stick with iOS 12.4 and retain jailbreak.

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Another day, another Linux distribution. Yeah, it can get a bit tedious reading about so many operating systems based on the open source kernel, so here at BetaNews we typically try to inform you about the better ones. You see, there are many garbage Linux distributions that can simply be ignored -- they are either low-quality or overly redundant. Ultimately, it all becomes noise, harming the Linux community overall. Yes, having too much choice can be a negative.

Today, a wildly popular operating system achieves Beta status, and you should be interested -- it is worth your attention. Called "MX Linux," it has quietly gained a fairly large following, topping the charts at the legendary DistroWatch. MX Linux 19 Beta 1 is based on Debian 10 Buster and features the recently released Xfce 4.14 desktop environment. So, yeah, this is fairly bleeding edge stuff, although the Linux kernel is only at 4.19.5.

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Social media sites are a popular target for cybercriminals. It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise therefore to find that 53 percent of logins on social media sites are fraudulent and 25 percent of all new account applications are too.

These are among the findings of a study by anti-fraud platform Arkose Labs  which analyzed over 1.2 billion transactions spanning account registrations, logins and payments from financial services, e-commerce, travel, social media, gaming and entertainment industries, in real time.

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