Talynebear

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After months of speculation, a report has linked Google to a $1 billion acquisition of the video-streaming site Twitch.tv. VentureBeat's Wednesday report went so far as to call the deal "confirmed," but it didn't list an exact price, announcement date, or other key details, relying solely on "sources familiar with the matter."

The deal, originally reported by Variety in May, may seem like a small drop in the bucket for Google. YouTube racks up more than one billion monthly viewers compared to Twitch's 45 million. But the gaming-focused Twitch enjoys an edge thanks to dedicated features like internal console apps, screencasting, and live chat. The acquisition looks particularly attractive in the wake of e-sports' recent rise in Western popularity.

Though Twitch was founded by co-creators of Justin.tv, another streaming site, no report has mentioned whether the originating video-streaming site will be involved in the deal. If that amount remains around $1 billion, it'll be quite the coup for investors who have only sunk roughly $35 million into Twitch thus far.

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NASA

Not every space story can have a Hollywood ending, and unfortunately it’s looking like the situation with the newly resurrected ISEE-3 space probe is going to have a bittersweet conclusion. The International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 satellite has been dormant since 1998, but a crowdfunded group of "citizen scientists" were given permission by NASA to assume control of the spacecraft and see about bringing it into a closer orbit. The group, called the ISEE-3 Reboot Project, has been posting periodic updates on its blog, but the latest news isn’t good at all—ISEE-3’s thrusters aren’t operating as expected.

The probe uses small monopropellant rockets for attitude and translation (i.e., turning and moving); these thrusters work by squirting some amount of toxic hydrazine fuel into a thrust chamber coated with a catalyst. The hydrazine reacts very energetically with the catalyst, and the resulting puff of gas is directed out of a thrust nozzle, turning or moving the craft. The catch—and this is a catch for any engine—is that you need a way to move the fuel from its tank into the engine. For most rocket engines intended to operate in microgravity and vacuum, the simplest way to do this is not with complex pumps but rather by pressurizing the fuel tank with some amount of non-reactive gas (nitrogen is the most common). When you need to fire the engine, you squeeze fuel out of the tanks by pushing in more nitrogen.

Telemetry data indicating multiple unsuccessful firings.

ISEE-3 Reboot Project

It appears that ISEE-3’s nitrogen reserves have either been depleted or have leaked away into the void. Although the spacecraft was able to act on some of the commands sent to it during a spin-up on July 3 and a Trajectory Correction Maneuver on July 8, the ISEE-3 Reboot Project scientists suspect that the spacecraft’s initial movement was the result of residual pressurized fuel in the propulsion system. The team has been performing remote troubleshooting on the craft and they believe they have eliminated malfunctioning valves and other hardware issues as a source of failure (and you thought fixing your parents’ e-mail over the phone was hard!).

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Goldman Sachs has demanded a court order to get Google to unsend an e-mail that the bank sent in error, according to Reuters' report Wednesday. The e-mail contained "highly confidential" information addressed to the wrong account, a mistake on Goldman Sachs' part that Google hasn't yet been tempted to rectify.

Goldman Sachs did not specify to Reuters how many clients were affected in the situation, which occurred on June 23. Reportedly, the mistake happened while a Goldman Sachs contractor was testing internal changes made to Goldman Sachs' system to meet new requirements from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The contractor prepared a report with sensitive client information, including details on brokerage accounts, and e-mailed it to a gmail.com address, rather than the gs.com one she intended.

Reuters says that Goldman Sachs tried to "retrieve the report" and contact the owner of the Gmail account without success. Google told Goldman Sachs on June 26 that it couldn't reach through Gmail and delete the e-mail without a court order. Goldman Sachs filed with the New York Supreme Court, requesting "emergency relief" to avoid both a privacy violation and "the risk of unnecessary reputational damage to Goldman Sachs."

Ammonia may not explode, but it's hazardous enough that it needs to be approached with this sort of protective gear.

City of St. Louis

Every time a discussion of alternative energy and alternative fuels comes up, someone somewhere shouts, "hydrogen economy!" And every time someone shouts "hydrogen economy," a baby seal gets clubbed to death by an angry engineer.

Hydrogen is a Jekyll-and-Hyde character. It can have a relatively high energy density, and it's clean and abundant. The perfect fuel, right? Unfortunately, it's a gas, and a rather combustable one at that. To store it efficiently requires huge pressures and very heavy tanks, which are expensive. Hydrogen burns in the air at mixtures ranging from four percent to 75 percent and, unlike gasoline, the tiniest little spark will set it off. Expensive and dangerous, you say? Unless these problems are solved, the hydrogen economy (damn, another seal) will remain just over the horizon.

A recent publication has offered up ammonia as a compromise solution that, while still dangerous, is much more viable. Ammonia is a hydrogen-rich compound (three hydrogens and a single nitrogen atom). If you break ammonia up, you get nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas, so it's still clean. Best of all, though, storage is a lot more convenient. It liquifies at low temperature and pressure, so the tanks don't have to be so heavy. It is a bigger and heavier molecule, so leaks are far less common, and when it does leak, it doesn't diffuse so far or so fast.