Inside Society There Is A Beast - What I Am Reading 10/4/2016

CBC Radio - 'I'm not a bigot' Meet the U of T prof who refuses to use genderless pronouns -

CO: Isn't it also the role of a society to make people feel included and to have inclusiveness?

JP: No. It's not the role of society to make people feel included. That's not the role of society. The role of society is to maintain a modicum of peace between people. It's not the role of society to make people feel comfortable. I think society is changing in many ways. I can tell you one thing that I'm very terrified of, and you can think about this. I think that the continual careless pushing of people by left wing radicals is dangerously waking up the right wing. So you can consider this a prophecy from me if you want. Inside the collective is a beast and the beast uses its fists. If you wake up the beast then violence emerges. I'm afraid that this continual pushing by radical left wingers is going to wake up the beast.

Reuters - WikiLeaks' Assange signals release of documents before U.S. election -

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Tuesday the organization would publish around one million documents related to the U.S. election and three governments, but denied the release was aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton.

He said the documents would be released before the end of the year, starting with an initial batch in the coming week.

Schneier on Security - The Cost of Cyberattacks Is Less than You Might Think -

The result is that it often makes business sense to underspend on cybersecurity and just pay the costs of breaches:

Romanosky analyzed 12,000 incident reports and found that typically they only account for 0.4 per cent of a company's annual revenues. That compares to billing fraud, which averages at 5 per cent, or retail shrinkage (ie, shoplifting and insider theft), which accounts for 1.3 per cent of revenues.  

I read the register article (linked above) last week and passed it around at work, where the response was basically "bleh" or "Oh, this makes me so angry".  Maybe a little surprise that the cost was so low.  Personally I wasn't surprised at all, business will always seek the cheapest solution. This is not in itself a bad thing, the problem occurs when those hurt by that decision have no recourse.  In the Ford Pinto case that the Register article makes the comparison to they could sue.  In today's environment when you sign up for the service or the software you are stripped of that right.