Slashdot Mirror

There's a hilarious article detailing the various attempts the LA local government has made to stop taxis ripping off tourists, and which compares it with Uber.

Much of the expense is coming from trying to build one plane to be a master of all jobs for all branches of the military.

This and a hundred times this. I don't take my Jeep to the dragstrip, and I don't take my cruiser bike on trails. And one size fits all gloves don't fit on my hands either.

The very idea of the F35 replacing the A10 Warthog is laughable. Just attempting that feat makes it a bad replacement for the fighters it is supposed to replace. So you get a camel - a racehorse designed by a committee.

It's already been shown to not compete with the fighter planes we have now, https://medium.com/war-is-bori...

We'll see if industry support is more important than defense.

You know how I know you have no idea what you're talking about?

You mean this?

https://medium.com/war-is-bori...

Microsoft's announcement coincidentally came a day after New York City announced an $81M public-private K-12 CS mandate, which prompted Microsoft's Smith to join fellow FWD.us PAC backers Ron Conway and Fred Wilson, as well other execs from Google, Facebook, and Goldman Sachs, to explain to the masses "Why Computer Science for All is Good for All" in An Open Letter from the Nation's Tech and Business Leaders. Making an argument worthy of a tantrum-throwing toddler, the execs exclaimed in a pull-quote, "We need talent, we need it now, and we simply cannot find enough."

That's quite a jump in version numbers: from 0.12.7 to 4.0.0! Windows has got nothin' on that. From another article:

Having a converged project means converged release numbers which is why Node.js is jumping to v4.0 and avoiding overlap with any existing io.js version numbers.

This explanation doesn't persuade me. The version number is namespaced by the product name. It would have been Node 0.13, not io.js 0.13. I wouldn't have gotten confused.

I never heard about much version-number skipping until recently: Windows 10, PHP 7, and now Node 4. Has this always happened every now and then? It seems like before, doing just a dubious major-number increment, like from 3.4 to 4.0 instead of just to 3.5, would cause controversy.

> > The only downside of Agile is that we've lost our three largest customers...
> My last startup was Agiled out of existence like it sounds like yours is headed to. We had a sixty person team between devs, product, project management, and QA.

This, this thissitty this.

Fuck GP and fuck his Agile.

We were profitable. Net, not gross, margin over 50%. Then our fuckwitted senior managers decided to hire a bunch of cockgobbling Agilistas. We fucked up the culture and while we kept our customers, we drove away the people who actually did the work. The company is no longer profitable despite having grown revenues, because all the profits are now going to a fat, bloated layer of fucknobs whose job it is to tell the few of us remaining how to do our jobs. But hey, a few people got to become webdevs. A few more got free training on JIRA. And the rest of us, those of us with options that were in the money and looking forward to an eventual exit or a continued cut of the profits, well, we got fucking nothing. We lost. We got nothing, we weren't agile enough, good day, Sirs, the agilistas said "Good Day!"

Now it's a lifestyle company that will operate at breakeven in order to provide lifetime employment for the managers whose job it is to masturbate over burndown charts until the last customer migrates away and the founder turns out the lights.

/but I'm not bitter.
//okay, maybe I'm still a little bit bitter.

Let's face it, an autonomous vehicle would have to be an AI device.Seen any AI devices lately? And,... were you impressed? You don't hear the word 'AI' much these days. After decades of promises and verylittle progress outside some niche areas who dare to come out say he's in the AI field?

I saw a 'robot' this afternoon at a maker faire. Ridiculous. Driving a car through mixed traffic in a dynamic environment with pedestrians, children and old folks, unpredictable or incapacitated. It's impossible to do right with today's state of AI.

And if you *can* get it right then comes the problem of morality. What if the car's computer has to make a moral decision? What will you program it to do?

https://medium.com/@tanayj/sel...

The autonomous car needs Asimov's three laws of robotics, but obviously it's too damn stupid to understand them.

My $50K state of the art plugin hybrid doesn't even understand someone would want to close the windows after shutting off the engine.

More like the gizmo will never get made unless they have money from elsewhere and are using Kickstarter only as a marketing campaign. The $60k they are asking for won't cover even the materials. Just the mandatory FCC/CE/UL certifications will take a third of their budget, assuming that they actually pass on the first try.

This article gives a good breakdown of how much it does actually cost to build and ship a hardware product:
https://medium.com/bolt-blog/w...

Nope.

An F-35 was put through it's paces against an F-16 in an extensive series of mock combat encounters. At almost every stage the F-35 was at an energy disadvantage and in a dog fight, Energy is King.

I suspect it would lose miserably to an F-15 also.

It should be shit canned and moeny spent on upgrading and building more of the F-15s and F-16s

"The web was not envisioned as a form of television when it was invented. But, like it or not, it is rapidly resembling TV: linear, passive, programmed and inward-looking." https://medium.com/matter/the-...

Sad but true.

What would the point of this be? In general, Unicode standardizes codepoints and other abstract properties of characters, but it doesn't standardize how the character looks. U+0067 is "g", the "LATIN SMALL LETTER G", but exactly how that looks depends on which font you're using. Or more relevant, many emoji are very different between Android and iOS. I'd think that symbols for food allergies need to look the same everywhere if the point is for them to be used as warnings on food packaging, menus, etc.

1. The complaints about beta I felt were misplaced. They shouldn't have made the beta default for anyone (and perhaps they should have refined it just a little more first...) but I think Slashdotters seriously overreacted to what was an easy to opt-out of test of a new UI. (And frankly, with D1 broken - thanks Pudge - and D2 horrible, I was looking forward to someone doing something about the /. UI.)

I agree with you on #2 and #3 but disagree on the issue of Slashdot Beta. Slashdot beta was part of an industrywide UX antipattern. It goes something like this.

1) You have a functional site or application and a large userbase.
2) You hire some UXtards whose job it is to change things for change's sake.
3) The UXtards implement changes like those involved in Digg v3. GNOME 3. Firefox 4-without-the-status bar through Australis inclusive. Windows 8. Google Maps. And, of course, Slashdot beta.
4) The users revolt.
5) The devs' jobs depend on constantly learning new frameworks/tech and polishing up their resumes for their next job. The UXtard's job depends on implementing "the vision." The UX manager's career relies on not having the UX redesign project fail. The CEO's career depends on monetization, and he/she is told by the CTO and VPs of engineering that the UX redesign is part and parcel of this. Everywhere along the chain of command, somebody's personal career goals are in direct conflict with the overwhelming negative user feedback.
6) Everyone in the chain of command issues patronizing puff pieces and blog posts with verbiage like "we're making it better for you!" which are intended to placate the userbase, but which only anger it more, because the users aren't that stupid.
7) The user feedback is ignored, pageviews/clicks/marketshare, and revenue, plummets.
8) Nobody gets fired, because everybody was just doing their jobs / covering their asses. Devs implemented the UX team's spec and got to play with cool tech. UX team got buy-in from marketing. Marketing had orders from C-suite. C-suite wanted to monetize. Everybody gets their paycheck, even if all they accomplished was ruining the underlying asset.

It has happened over and over and over again, and seems to be the hallmark of this decade in tech: take a working project, rip out everything useful in order to make it "cleaner" or "simpler," ignore overwhelming feedback until long after the damage to the asset or brand is permanent, pretend nothing was ever wrong in the first place, liquidate.

He has done this kind of "diashow" for some time now. The first time I saw it it was awesome, now I just ignore the whole story.
But very much enjoyed his post on the last "new planet discovered thats even more like earth" news wave:
https://medium.com/starts-with...

https://medium.com/backchannel... This, as well, is a story about health care computer systems, which means it's 60% likely they're talking about MUMPS.

There were a few mentions of (P)NaCl in this interview: https://medium.com/javascript-...

tl;dr Brendan Eich suggests (P)NaCl becomes irrelevant over time (or it has already) and WebAssembly is the future.

Apparently one of the goals of WebAssembly is to make Emscripten more practical.

But also to aim higher than Emscripten. From an interview with Brendan Eich on Medium: "At first, WebAssembly starts out just like ASM.js, but with a compressed syntax, that’s a binary syntax. But once all the browsers support both wasm and ASM.js, and after a decent interval of browser updates, then wasm can start to grow extra semantics that need not be put into JavaScript. They may in fact be put into both JavaScript and wasm because it’s the same one engine (1vm), but there are certain things we might not want to ever put into JavaScript that could be put into wasm for the benefit of other languages like C++ or Haskell. There are lots of languages you might compile to wasm."

Might as well read an interview with the man behind webassembly. Found it extremely informative and I'm looking forward to a future where all major browsers support first-class alternatives to javascript through webassembly.

I've never heard of either of these people, nor are they mentioned in my post.

You talked about Gamergate no ? From researching this stuff, I have found both to have been prominent Gamergate figures. So are you admitting you do not have all relevant information about the Gamergate campaign ?

I suggest more research before you continue discussion on the matter, because it's now apparent you're ill informed.

This is a piece Oliver wrote last year about this topic :

https://medium.com/@oliverbcampbell/when-a-black-game-journalist-spoke-up-on-gamergate-a1f36421022

What the ever loving fuck are you talking about? Or is this a #notyourshield troll?

What ? What's "notyourshield" ? Guess it's other stuff I gotta look up.

Oh well, chatting with you is nice, I get to uncover a lot of things digging around following your posts. It seems this Notyourshield thing is exactly against what you seem to be doing here : dismissing women and minorities because they agree with Gamergate. Pretending they don't exist and erase them.

My question becomes, what do you have against women and minorities that hold different world view than you do that you would go to such length as to completely deny their existence ? I hope this is simply lack of information on your part, and not intolorence to people who disagree with you.

"But a) they're only planning on buying 150 (and only 50 by 2020), while we already have 115 and will end up with 2,400+ and b) if the plan works dogfighting is irrelevant."

They're now only planning on buying 12 actually:

https://medium.com/war-is-bori...

Yes. 12.

In practice, it's not much of a stretch to view it as anything other than a cancellation of the programme in everything but name.

You know whats worse than todays pilots flying ancient airplanes, a brand new extravegantly expensive F-35 that cant match an F-16 or F-15E built in the 80s, planes built for a fraction of the price.

The F-35 might be an OK successor to the F-117 as a mostly stealth small bomber, but all indications are its completely worthless in a close in dogfight, you just have to read the leaked report from a recent test against an ancient F-16.

The F-35 simply doesnt have enough power, cant turn fast enough and bleeds off to much energy. The pilot found one manuever he could use to shake the F-16 but it consumed so much energy he had to run away and try to get the energy back.

The F-35 will also be horrible in the close air support role at which the A-10 excels, again at an even smaller fraction of the price tag.

F-35 is a classic jack of all trades and master of none.

There might have been a place for a few hundred of them but for the U.S. and every allied air force to think they are going to use one horrible design to replace every fighter they have is complete insanity. If it ever reaches full deployment, one accident or problem and the entire western world will have no air force. At least the Navy has the sense to keep the F-18 alive.

The F-35 is a tribute to the extent Lockheed has seized total control of Congress and the Pentagon, they could literally sell the Air Force actual turkeys for a hundred million a pop and get away with it.

Those B-52â(TM)s still flying today is because Northrop, has also seized control of the Air Forces generals made the B-2 so expensive and so few in number the Air Force canâ(TM)t afford to risk it in combat.

Besides the U.S. has been fighting people living in mud huts who have no air force and air defenses for over a decade, B-52â(TM)s and A-10â(TM)s work incredibly well in that role.

but I would imagine that they could much more easily create a solar grid than dealing with the nasty politics surrounding nuclear, if energy was the primary concern. A bit fishy.

I agree with your sentiment. But wait!

First, its their legal right to nuclear energy. Second, they (Iran), are a sovereign nation and as such, are free to pursue their ambitions for whatever reason. Further, if we take a look at what "the greatest democracy" in the world has done, they have wasted over a trillion dollars on a plane that just doesn't measure up! This is despite having huge deficits.

Question for you: Why do ou think that their only reason for pursuing nuclear energy is for energy alone? Why? Couldn't be also because they want to learn? Heck, much of what makes today's life what it is, is that those who lived before us did a lot of research in fields that one could argue weren't meant to make Joe Six Pack's life easier. But we all benefit as time goes by, don't we?

Just leave them alone.

I got interested again in space exploration and development way back in 1977 when I read a book by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill titled The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. That book laid out a case for building large rotating space stations -- called space colonies -- that could be as large as 5 miles long and 2 miles in diameter. By rotating them, it would feel -- roughly -- like Earth normal gravity inside. With a properly created biosphere inside, it would seem like living on Earth. What would the people in these colonies do to benefit people on Earth? One big idea was building space based solar power stations that would power the Earth cleanly and cheaply.

As the years progressed, I learned that such things, if possible, are far in the future. One group I joined was the L5 Society. Back in the early 1980s a common saying was "L5 by '95." We were young and very optimistic. I now sometimes say "L5 by '95 -- 2495." Since the 1980s we have learned we have much to learn about creating independent biospheres. Some of the Mars crowd is working on that. I think that is a good thing -- but it will take a long time.

Could people on Mars -- assuming they could get there -- do anything to benefit people on Earth as much as this? I and others doubt it -- at least in the near term future. Terraform Mars? Please.

All Dressed Up For Mars and Nowhere To Go by Elmo Keep goes into the problems with sending humans to Mars in far more detail than I can do in a short Slashdot post.

Because you can make more money by adding more languages?
https://medium.com/@galyonkin/...

Yeah ... seems to boil down to "nobody wanted our stuff", "had no idea how to make it into a business", and "my magical idea didn't work".

There's some real good advice buried under all the "I'm a special snowflake but the market was too stupid to see how special I am!" idiocy. Like this one, for example: 99 reasons

(Yes, I RTFA *and* I clicked the links)

Actually, some good advice after all:

Growing up everyone told me I could be whatever I wanted to be.

...

That creativity that we were praised for in elementary school and that has become so central to the way we think of ourselves worthless.

We've raised a nation of people who were indoctrinated with the idea that they can do anything, or be anything that they want. We told them that their ideas were important. We lied.

I would just settle for bug fixes and a better name than "El Capitan". In fact, the name bothers me so much it drove me to start a blog again just to rant about how bad the current naming scheme is.

Ha, you should see what happens in Egypt when you type google into google!

This is literally the dumbest fucking question I've ever seen in a slashdot article header. Fuck you slashdot, you're getting stupid to the point of being insulting.

Potty mouth zero-content sniping comments and Dice troll crap. Do they come in spray cans these days? So a science article has stunning visuals and not a single damned equation, like some of the boring games discussed around here. Back inside your Schwarzschildlike radius!

Of course it is relevant and interesting to speculate what black holes look like. It's primal because they're the most perilous things yet conceived and yet no one has actually 'seen' one. Even more disturbing, the physics claims we never could actually see them, only their effects. So we become curious about those effects. Not just from idle fancy, we instinctively feel the need to know how they may appear to us, no matter how unlikely that they would, because they are dangerous.

Imagine the night illuminated by a house being completely consumed by fire, explosions, steam rising as jets from fire hoses sweep across its blackened face and through windows. Children splash in the puddles, step over hoses. People stand transfixed... why? And almost no one is clustered around the physicist who has set up a portable chalkboard on the corner and is trying to describe the exothermic process of combustion in real-time. They are interested, sure, but there will be time for that later. As the terrifying monster rages they must look, see it through to the end, because we are curious, intelligent resourceful beings and must look directly into the eyes of the Enemy.

Construction work? Try this...

http://www.wired.com/2012/09/b...

Do enough of it, and the module construction itself can be automated and robotized. Or seen modern shipbuilding these days? Prefab modules assembled and welded by robots.

And so what if there's still "a lot" (weasel words) of labor around that. There's still less of it, and every decrease cascades into additional hits on labor. See the following piece on the potential impact of robot trucks on the long-haul trucking industry.

https://medium.com/basic-incom...

Russian tanks just have to be better than this https://medium.com/war-is-bori... against Ukraine. Those were bought by money of Ukrainian tax payers. Or wait, WTF http://sputniknews.com/militar... - sold by private Ukrainian company. This another funny one - http://thediplomat.com/2015/03... - basically somebody stole 5 Indian fighter jets, out of 40 that were send to Ukraine for upgrade.

Presidents change every 4 years in Ukraine, but their mission stays basically the same - steal as much as you can, divert attention by some crazy bullshit. I've been to Crimea a few years back, public transport in Simfiropol was from nineteen sixties - in more than 10 years since USSR collapse Ukraine did nothing for Crimea development. Could be that this is the actual cause of separatism? Shoving Ukrainian village dialect and equally funny culture (vishivanka?lapti?) probably also played a part - those people used to be part of a nation that defeated Napoleon, Hitler and launched a man into space, just to name a few, and now they are supposed to be proud of nazi collaborationists and a village style t-shirt? Time to end this circus, give Galicia to Poland, rest join with Russia, move capital and all bunch of bureaucrats to Kiev and name resulting country Kievskaya Russia.Wait, I'll roll one more...

Russia is also fucked up - looks like they are building unique joined cristian - muslim proudly multinational theocratic state, lol. With a touch of idiocraty, offcourse. Our next lecture might be on topic of retards and idiots in all branches of Russian government, and influence of their retarded laws and other acts on a daily life of ordinary citizens, observed from a safe distance.

Much better is the KentuckyFC guy who scours arxiv.org for interesting NEW physics ideas, discoveries, and speculations. https://medium.com/the-physics... Some of his stories were posted on slashdot in the past, but it seems this StartsWithABang guy has replaced him. So now I just go there directly.

(Full disclosure: I am neither female nor a parent; I'm a male who studies physics.)

There are too many links in the summary. The most relevant one is the google study, which has some interesting data and is fairly neutral. I don't think the study supports the flamebait headline, but instead paints a complicated picture. In particular, see the charts on page 5 of the study.

The story headline is in the same style as this interesting article titled "Papas, please let your babies grow up to be princesses". That article makes the case that interests in "girly" things are not mutually exclusive with interests in STEM fields. There are anecdotes in the above comments about girls being pressured by parents into STEM activities (like robotics clubs), and how it often doesn't work. Perhaps this is because some parents push STEM at the expense of "girly" things rather than simply encouraging STEM without taking a hostile stance towards "girly" things.

Just a thought.

You mean the CIA is developing brillo OS for internet of things.

Please why does slashdot keep calling the CIA "Google" ?

Every time a statistician uses 'average' or 'chances are' in a sentence, God kills a kitten.
Think of the kittens!

I am at a complete loss to understand why taking an important step in Earth's defense that could only be accomplished by its most intelligent species is only able to raise a sorry-ass-monkey-fuck $5,898 from 111 people in 11 days.

And now I am being told I should embrace some gambler's fallacy of 'non-imminence' (on average! we think!) and ratchet down my whimpering terror and boost complacency until I am a well-adjusted individual.

Statisticians and writers sometimes take inappropriate liberties when presenting probabilities. This is natural because finding joy in figuring things out is one of our finest traits. The reason for choosing any particular angle to present a result can be "because it would be fun to think of it that way". Or as in articles like this, to allay what is perceived as a generally unfounded or disproportionate amount of fear. Addressing these fears directly is invaluable because they can traumatize children, and have even been known to swing adults into voting Republican --- or Democrat!

For preventable global existential threats, is it 'OK' to play the stats game by the same rules as for other non-global or non-existential threats? Is it even ethical? That word bites doesn't it.

Isn't there some kind of 'division by zero' thrown exception thing that applies when we're talking about extinction events? As a species, aren't we clever enough to invent one if it does not exist?

Not all statistics are actionable.
And not all science articles are fit for children.

[TA ] Human beings haven't been around on Earth forever. [...] Chances are, we're not going to be around forever, either. It's only a question of how and when we're going to go out.

That's it, kids --- it's nature's way. Go gently into the Good Night when your time is come, as a species. "That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea." If this some sort of foundation argument, then what is being built?

We are the species who invented "forever". We are not bound by it because its definition is not yet complete. By what ever objective scientific time scale that can be derived from any present theory of The End, you must try to factor an important unknown: the effect future human insight and due diligence may bring to bear on the problem of survival. If you have trouble believing this as I do, join the club. I won't.

I've already said my piece about those poor 100 people who died from asteroids last year (on average! we think!).

All in all, a great article, well researched and compellingly written. But the why of it really sucks. How did that happen? Are there hungry insurance salesman lurking nearby worried that the sorry-ass-monkey-fuck $5,898 from 111 people in 11 days will eat into their commissions?

Don't sell out that ultimate future by falling prey to an extinction event that could happen tomorrow. The way things stand it may be at least ten years before a viable mission is ready to go IF we start today. Let us hope it's ten years of good luck.

Jobs available backed by 121 million in VC funding- https://21.co/#jobs

Companies investing 121 million in 21INC - https://www.crunchbase.com/org...

More details - http://www.coindesk.com/21-int...

better article - https://medium.com/@21dotco/a-...

Reason Why Qualcomm may be so interested - https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The funny thing is there already is a Keurig for cats. CatGenie: an automated, self-cleaning, litter-box (with DRM). It requires SaniSolution SmartCartridge to run. The machine also sometimes cooks the cat poop, and the CatGenie Washable Granules also have a tendency to get stuck on the cats paws and end up around the house (like on the kitchen bench).

There is a review here. The reviews on Amazon are also pretty informative.

Read this story a day ago, and also this solid criticism on its bullshittiness.

https://medium.com/@cainejw/th...

Strip mining companies spend millions on giant trucks whose only function is to shuttle minerals on a private road, from the bottom of the mine to the unloading dock. Until the technology of driving robots has clearly proven itself in a setting like this, it should be kept off the public streets and highways.

The technology of driving robots has already clearly proven itself in mining. For instance:
https://medium.com/war-is-bori...

(from a google search for "robot mining truck")

You mean aside from the fact she's a perjuring pathologically lying domestic abuser who works with racist GNAA trolls?

I wonder when it'll become acceptable for male captains to wear skirts.

It already happened, last century, when Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, a skirt-wearing navy commander, captured the first German naval flag for the British in World War I.

https://medium.com/war-is-bori...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mimi-T...

According to Ethan Siegel, dark energy isn't written off, we just know a bit more about it.

https://medium.com/@PresidentO...

The text, because this "news" article couldn't seem to post a link: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the...

There's people even on the reddit thread pointing out that the person mentioning Snowden has no basis for the assumption. As with all things, follow the money; in a couple days if that link to "Snowden" donations turns out to be some fat fuck padding his own bank account by preying off mental midgets, i will not be surprised in the least.

From what the EO actually looks like, i'd suggest the only ones who are going to be hating it are the hackers and thieves stealing personal data.... oh, and the numbnuts who have such a kneejerk reaction of hating anything Obama does so much that if he came out in favor of breathing, they'd all hold their breaths till dead.

Remember what they say about assuming. The title of the article should be something along the lines of: "Potential con-man fleecing more anti-Obama idiots by scaring them again."

@HarryCheung has tested mobile app by reimplementing the same app with 13 different languages. This includes C++ (fastest on iOS and Android), Swift, Xamarin, J2ObjC, Javascript & RubyMotion (slowest on iOS). All the code is available on GitHub for the community to improve further. Disclosure: I provided feedback on the posts but was not involved in the testing.

Check out his cool picture, carefully examining the wall in the NOC. The president already does have broad leeway to enforce sanctions, though; and he can even invade a country if needed, although if it lasts too long he needs permission from congress.

There is no evidence Mars One is not sincere in their attempts.

How about this quote from an article dated March 16 2015.

So, here are the facts as we understand them: Mars One has almost no money. Mars One has no contracts with private aerospace suppliers who are building technology for future deep-space missions. Mars One has no TV production partner. Mars One has no publicly known investment partnerships with major brands. Mars One has no plans for a training facility where its candidates would prepare themselves. Mars One’s candidates have been vetted by a single person, in a 10-minute Skype interview.

What more evidence do you need?

Lets look at the article "refuting" the criticisms.

This is simply a polite request asking them to continue their support of Mars One, as they are now very close to being part of their project.

The subtext being that if they do not donate they will become less " close to being part of their project".

Even though it would be desirable that Mars One corrected every false statement, they cannot be held responsible for how the media interpret and phrase their reports about Mars One.

For statements like this it is the responsability of Mars One to correct such big misconceptions. But they will not as te false information helps them.

Whether they completed the application process to the video stage may be where you begin to see different numbers.

So anyone who clicked on "apply here" is counted in their numbers. That is completely skewing the numbers and they know it.

It would have consumed inordinate amounts of time and money to go through rigorous testing for 660 Round 2 candidates.

It is strange that the couple of million dollars to interview 600 candidates is too high but the 3,000 time that amount to get to Mars is not. They also told round 2 candidates there would be interview and then changed. That is a classic bait and switch.

The primary source of finance is to be an investment firm in the first stages of the mission (leading up to and including the first manned mission).

Where is this investment firm? Why won't you name them? Do they even exist?

The $6 billion in revenue was never stated to be entirely funded from one source.

While this is factually true, it plays on the use of absolutes. If even 0.1% of revenue comes from other sources that statement is true. According to the Mars One site their major sources of income would be Media and IP. Notice they never say just how much they expect to receive from each source. They just show the numbers for the Olympics. Had they shown the number for Big Brother it would be more accurate.

Scam implies profit. If Mars One is a scam, show who you think is getting rich.

The executives running Mars one are getting paid an unknown amount.

Show who is being cheated/harmed when all of the candidates are participating voluntarily and are aware of the low probability of success?

Here are some things and people being harmed;
Other space programs who's funding is being wasted on Mars One.
Future similar projects will always have to deal with the "Mars One" stigma.
Any future large crowd funding will have to deal with the "Mars One" stigma.
Anyone who was ever on the list will be ridiculed for falling for the "Mars One" scam.

"It's interesting how different news sites spin #marsgate"

That's because there are quality news sites and there are blogs. There is no evidence Mars One is not sincere in their attempts.

Here's another medium article by the Mars One applicants refuting the conspiracy theory: https://medium.com/@oscarmathe...

Please stop calling this entity Google and start called it by it's real name: The CIA

You mean the CIA ?

Since the 3 of the last 4 articles are about the CIA you should really use their real name instead of the psyop "Google"

https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e

Please stop calling this entity Google:

https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e

Everytime you hear the word Google uttered please know it's a direct intelligence asset of the CIA.

Please rephrase the headline: "CIA taking over new tlds"