Well, they did eventually port it to Firefox. The demo is down right now, but it ran fine at least on Ubuntu.

Really exicited to see if they port this to Firefox. They have already ported the version 3 of the Unreal Engine to Firefox, using OpenGL for graphics and Asm.js for code. The speed difference compared to the native version should be very small to non-existent, since Asm.js is statically compiled.

I follow developments in the Baltics somewhat, and I have never heard of this. I found a story on RT about a Latvian Waffen SS veterans' march, which was accompanied by an anti-fascist counter-demonstration. I could imagine that some Latvians view the SS as heroes even though Nazi Germany occupied Latvia, because the Nazis fought the Soviets, and the Soviet occupation that followed was much more brutal than the Nazi occupation. I don't think the police or the government is taking sides here, even though RT (which is known for its propaganda stories) tries to spin it that way: in a democratic society, everyone has the right to assemble and express opinions, and one job of the police is guaranteeing that right – even if it means protecting someone paying tribute to Nazi history from an angry mob.

I understand some people of Russian ethnicity who moved or were moved to the Baltics during the Soviet occupation do not have a citizenship of the Baltic state that they reside in, among others because the Baltic states require a proficiency in the official state language – which is not Russian – and the state views those Russian-speakers as being citizens of the modern-day Russian federation. However, since these people have no Russian citizenship either, they are not citizens of any country. Living as a non-citizen can be difficult, but every day more and more ethnic Russian receive the citizenship through successful assimilation.

I was not able to find a source, but I don't find this at all surprising. Displaying Nazi insignia is banned in Germany and Israel, because Germans and Jews suffered tremendously from Nazism. The people of the Baltics suffered tremendously from the Soviet occupation, so it is understandable that they in turn do not tolerate Soviet symbols.

What on Earth are you talking about? There are definitely no Nazis in power in any Baltic country (Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia) – they are all lead by liberal-democratic, conservative, social-democratic or centrist governments.

Fidesz, the ruling party of Hungary, has links to Nazi-like groups, but it is still half a Europe away from the Baltics.

You would be surprised to hear that many democratic countries in present-day Europe apart from the Nazi-Germany itself fought alongside the Nazis in WWII, including Italians, Finns, Romanians, Bulgarians and Norwegians. And these were the real-deal WWII genociding, totalitarian, Führer-hailing Nazis – not some modern-day, nostalgic Neo-Nazis, who don't even know how to genocide. And apart from those countries that fought alongside them, in the 1930s Nazis had large amounts of supporters in every Western country, and their policies were widely regarded as progressive, modern and necessary. Nowadays we know that the Nazi policies led to ruin, but the masses of the 1930s did not and thought they were behaving rationally. Do you think human thinking has changed much in mere 80 years?

Russia has at least a superficially "legitimate" claim for Crimea, since some 60% of the population are ethnic Russians. Making claims for any other parts of Ukraine is a whole other deal, since every other region of Ukraine is ethnically mostly Ukrainian.

Why shouldn't Ukraine just give up Crimea for the sake of national unity? Ukraine as a whole seems to be flying from one crisis to another, and it is seems to be torn between the pro-Russia and pro-West factions. Maybe Ukraine should just focus building its future as a Western country, and give up those territories where the population wants to live under Russian rule. Maybe later those areas can then join Ukraine if they so wish, like happened with the unification of West and East Germany.

What Google has going for them with Android is the ecosystem. I guess they make some proper money from their share of Play store purchases and in-app advertisement revenues. Thinking of it, I am pretty surprised Microsoft did not come up with this earlier. Their product is dying and they should be building a similar ecosystem like Google, not clinging to the past where people pay quadzillions for the platform software.

I am just waiting for people to get hands on it, cripple all the Microsoft spyware/adware functions, crack the usage restrictions and publish it all on Internets as an application that you just install on your cost-free adware Windows. I mean, many people already use Windows only to run Win-only apps inside a virtual machine, so paying for the license feels like a total rip-off. This is excellent if Microsoft is rolling out a cost-free version, joke will be on them.

The editor can not be downloaded anywhere. They don't even tell you what platforms it supports – although someone on Reddit mentioned it only supports Macintosh. I am not signing up to their marketing e-mails before they actually tell me what I am even getting in return.

This is indeed absolutely ridiculous and priceless statement.

To understand why they gave such a statement, we must know some background. The whole debacle started in 2012 when the Finnish government's IT department had a meeting with Nokia, where Nokia's management assured them that Nokia's Lumia phones had superior security and user privacy to both iPhone and Androids. Consequently, the government bought several Lumia phones for top officials who engage in sensitive communication, like the Prime Minister. Thanks to Snowden leaks, the government in 2013 then received contrary information: that Lumia phones were just as hackable as other smartphones through the inclusion of the Microsoft operating system.

Consequently, the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA) made an officially actionable inquiry to Nokia regarding whether the devices they sold indeed revealed the user's confidential communications, location information and other private information without the user's authorization. The authority warned that if the corporation had knowledge that the phone was leaking such data, and did not answer truthfully, it could be held liable under the criminal law for false statement in official proceedings and failing to report a serious offence.

The company then replied, that they were unable to officially give such an assurance (i.e. they probably knew that the device was leaking private data). Then, FICORA made another official inquiry, asking for even a smaller set of privacy assurances. Nokia was again unable to give an official assurance of privacy of its devices, so in August 2013 officials from FICORA and Nokia had an informal meeting where they tried to find common ground: what kind of privacy assurances Nokia could actually give about its devices. Turns out, Nokia could only go as far as to assure that it had not installed any additional spying modules – and only to those devices that it was selling in Finland, anyway.

So they delimited the official assurance that Nokia should give to only concern the hardware and software it had itself made and was selling in Finland, excluding actions of their subcontractors and business partners (like Microsoft). Well, Nokia was able to give such an assurance, even if it is obviously of no value to consumers. But the company had something to show for FICORA: at least Nokia itself takes Finnish and EU privacy regulations seriously, even if it is in partnerships with other corporations for which it can not make equal assurances.

At what point do you think in a real-world anarchy would be overtaken by the power-hungry, nihilistic individuals seeking to establish an aristocracy of the competent, and be turned into a walled garden of the like-minded only? But wait.. did I just describe Wikipedia? No way...

"Yes, welcome to delete the false information that we're publishing about you/your company. Oh, you work for that company? Let the ban hammer sing!" COI (Conflict Of Interest), i.e. someone editing an article where they have a stake at play, often means in practice that the user is banned within microseconds, if there are any anonymous editors with differing opinions. The guideline page itself says "Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question". The admins have even set up a noticeboard, where anonymous editors can report people they suspect of having "COI".

This is classical Wikipedia style arrogance. What you are essentially saying, is that Wikipedia will default to publishing blatant misinformation and propaganda added by anonymous and/or pseudonymous editors with impunity. If you happen to disagree with a mispresentation of your person, your company or your product published through Wikipedia, you must jump through numerous hoops and face the newcomer-hostile "Wikipedia community", who will first demand you read through several 10+ page guidelines, manuals and policy discussions. Then, you will need to contact an admin, who might live on a different timezone, to have the page actually modified. And you had better declare your COI on your user page, too. There might be other hoops to jump through as well – just for clearing lies and misrepresentations published on Wikipedia that happen to concern you. And if you at any point make even the slightest of a mistake, you and your whole company (under the "sockpuppet rules") are easily banned from Wikipedia forever.

Why would any sensible person who has better things in life than reading Wikipedia manuals and guidelines ever even try correcting the pages? The hostile and self-proclaimed meritocracy make Wikipedia a truly kafkaesque experience to all outsiders who don't happen to be wiki-nerds or willing to become one. Paid editing, exactly what Wiki-PR seems to have been doing, would be the easy way to make Wikipedia more neutral by allowing companies to hire editors to remove at least some of the blatant propaganda that Wikipedia is currently full of.

Just like with the Linux kernel, it's a high time the Wikipedia community gave up the futile resistance to paid editing. It's already happening, and denying it is only embarrassing with "revelations" like this IBM case. What goes to the whole Wiki-PR debacle, turns out all the company was doing was correcting errors, libel and defamation that anonymous Wikipedia editors hiding behind pseudonyms and IP addresses have been adding to Wikipedia.

As it stands, Wikipedia is essentially an anarchy where anyone can publish all sorts of lies and propaganda, and companies like Wiki-PR are needed so that those, who are damaged by misinformation that anonymous Wikipedia editors publish, can hire neutral editors to fight the anonymous hoaxers. Wikipedia's own volunteer community has been since long overwhelmed by the sheer amounts of vandalism and biased information added every minute, and only the most obvious cases of misinformation and fraud are ever caught. But instead of celebrating the work that Wiki-PR was doing for the people and companies who have fallen victim to the terror of Wikipedia misinformation, the company behind Wikipedia instead chose to demonized Wiki-PR to media and threatened to sue them.

What's really worrying, is that Google gives Wikipedia a "boost" in its search rankings. So for example, any hoaxer can easily use Wikipedia to publish misinformation about people, products and companies that they don't like. Then anyone searching Google for the name of the person, product or company are immediately served the Wikipedia page on the subject. This page is often full of misinformation and propaganda, while those concerned (like the employees of the said company or the person being defamed himself) are forbidden from correcting the article. Previously, Wikipedia admins were satisfied with just banning those fighting the misinformation under the "conflict of interest" doctrine. But now, the company behind Wikipedia has demonstrated that they are ready to sue you if you want to correct the lies that are being distributed through their platform.