A Dutch startup called Mars One aims to establish a human colony on Mars by 2023 -- 10 years ahead of NASA's schedule -- and fund the $6 billion project by turning it into "the biggest media event ever."

Yep, it's basically Big Brother on Mars (and, in fact, Big Brother creator Paul Römer is one of Mars One's sponsors).

"To attract sponsors, we will create appealing media content around the selection of the astronauts, the training, unmanned missions and other topics," said Mars One cofounder Bas Lansdorp.

The astronaut selection process -- read: auditions -- for the show will begin in 2012, and the competition will narrow the candidate pool from 40 down to 4 over a decade-long training process. Naturally, viewers will get a say in who gets "voted off" the space mission.

Simon Cowell could not be reached for comment.

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Google's new unified privacy policy, which allows the company to combine data from all of its sites into a single profile of a user, officially takes effect today.

The company says the new policy will be easier for users to understand, because it consolidates more than 70 separate policy documents from various Google services into one place. Google also says it won't be collecting any new data as a result of the change.

However, privacy advocates worry that tying a user's web history, past searches and YouTube viewing history to the same account gives Google a problematic amount of information about its users.

Short of deleting your Google account entirely, there are some precautions you can take to minimize what Google knows about you under the new policy, including deleting your web history and two separate YouTube histories.

[mashable / consumerist]