Mark Tyson writes via Tom's Hardware: On this day 34 years ago, an unknown computer science student from Finland announced that a new free operating system project was "starting to get ready." Linus Benedict Torvalds elaborated by explaining that the OS was "just a hobby, [it] won't be big and professional like GNU." Of course, this was the first public outing for the colossal collaborative project that is now known as Linux. Above, you can see Torvalds' first posting regarding Linux to the comp.os.minix newsgroup. The now famously caustic, cantankerous, curmudgeon seemed relatively mild, meek, and malleable in this historic Linux milestone posting. Torvalds asked the Minix community about their thoughts on a free new OS being prepared for Intel 386 and 486 clones. He explained that he'd been brewing the project since April (a few months prior), and asked for direction. Specifically, he sought input about other Minix users' likes and dislikes of that OS, in order to differentiate Linux. The now renowned developer then provided a rough summary of the development so far. Some features of Linux that Torvalds thought were important, or that he was particularly proud of, were then highlighted in the newsgroup posting. For example, the Linux chief mentioned his OS's multithreaded file system, and its absence of any Minix code. However, he humbly admitted the code as it stood was Intel x86 specific, and thus "is not portable." Last but not least, Torvalds let it be known that version 0.01 of this free OS would be out in the coming month (September 1991). It was indeed released on September 17, 1991, but someone else decided on the OS name at the last minute. Apparently, Torvalds didn't want to release his new OS under the name of Linux, as it would be too egotistical, too self-aggrandizing. He preferred Freax, a portmanteau word formed from Free-and-X. However, one of Torvald's colleagues, who was the administrator for the project's FTP server, did not think that 'Freax' was an appealing name for the OS. So this co-worker went ahead and uploaded the OS as 'Linux' on that date in September, without asking Torvalds.

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Struggling small biotech firms are pivoting into cryptocurrencies, rebranding as "crypto treasuries" or stockpiling digital assets like Ether and Litecoin as a last-ditch effort to boost share prices amid stalled funding and weak drug pipelines. Bloomberg reports: Shares of 180 Life Sciences Corp., now doing business as ETHZilla, tripled after the Peter Thiel-backed company said it had accumulated Ether tokens worth over $350 million. Less than two weeks later, the stock's gains have been erased. In July, Sonnet BioTherapeutics Holdings soared 243% in one volatile session on plans to transform into a public crypto treasury while MEI Pharma Inc. initially doubled on plans to sell shares to fund a Litecoin treasury. Such about-faces are a tried-and-true formula for small firms when funds are low and shares are under pressure. For drugmakers it can be a sudden shift to chase after trendy new treatment targets, still other companies rebrand with buzzwords like artificial intelligence to juice returns. Now some biotech executives are using digital coins to pump new life into flagging shares. So far in 2025, at least 10 biotechs have announced a pivot into digital assets. The announcements frequently spark frenzied, but short-lived, spikes in shares. "If they're low on ideas, if they can't find relevance in drug development, they're going to try to justify their existence as management in another way," according to Mike Taylor, lead portfolio manager of the Simplify Health Care ETF. "You have a handful of companies trying to reinvent themselves into some other tangent. And, most, if not all won't work out."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AMD's X3D-series Ryzen chips have become popular with PC gamers because games in particular happen to benefit disproportionately from the chips' extra 64MB of L3 cache memory. But that extra memory occasionally comes with extra headaches. Not long after they were released earlier this year, some early adopters started having problems with their CPUs, ranging from failure to boot to actual physical scorching and burnout -- the problems were particularly common for users of the 9800X3D processor in ASRock motherboards, and one Reddit thread currently records 157 incidents of failure for that CPU model across various ASRock boards. In an interview with the Korean language website Quasar Zone (via Tom's Hardware), AMD executives David McAfee and Travis Kirsch acknowledged the problems and pointed to the most likely culprit: motherboard makers who don't follow AMD's recommended specifications. Some manufacturers have historically shipped their AMD and Intel motherboards with elevated default power settings in the interest of squeezing a bit more performance out of the chips -- but those adjustments can also cause problems in some cases, especially for higher-end CPUs.

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Apple has filed a lawsuit against former Apple Watch staffer Dr. Chen Shi, alleging that he "conspired to steal Apple's trade secrets relating to Apple Watch and to disclose them to his new employers (Oppo)." The company alleges he downloaded 63 sensitive documents, attended technical meetings, and coordinated with Oppo to transfer proprietary information, though Oppo denies wrongdoing. The Verge reports: Ahead of starting his new job at Oppo, the employee, Dr. Chen Shi, attended "dozens" of meetings with technical members on the Apple Watch team to learn about their work and downloaded 63 documents "from a protected Box folder" that he loaded onto a USB drive, according to the lawsuit. Shi allegedly sent a message to Oppo saying that he was working to "collect as much information as possible" before starting his job. And he searched the internet for terms like "how to wipe out macbook" and "Can somebody see if I've opened a file on a shared drive?" from his Apple-issued MacBook before leaving the company. Shi was formerly a sensor system architect at Apple, and the company says he had "a front row seat to Apple's development of its cutting-edge health sensor technology, including highly confidential roadmaps, design and development documents, and specifications for ECG sensor technology." He now heads up a team working on sensing technology at Oppo -- which Apple says it learned because of "messages he left on his Apple-issued work iPhone." In his resignation letter to Apple, Shi said he was leaving "due to personal and family reasons." Via that iPhone, Apple also says it found messages from Oppo demonstrating that it "encouraged, approved, and agreed to Dr. Shi's plan to collect Apple's proprietary information before leaving Apple."

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Nvidia has launched its Jetson AGX Thor robotics chip module, a $3,499 "robot brain" developer kit that starts shipping next month. CNBC reports: After a company uses the developer kit to prototype their robot, Nvidia will sell Thor T5000 modules that can be installed in production-ready robots. If a company needs more than 1,000 Thor chips, Nvidia will charge $2,999 per module. CEO Jensen Huang has said robotics is the company's largest growth opportunity outside of artificial intelligence, which has led to Nvidia's overall sales more than tripling in the past two years. "We do not build robots, we do not build cars, but we enable the whole industry with our infrastructure computers and the associated software," said Deepu Talla, Nvidia's vice president of robotics and edge AI, on a call with reporters Friday. The Jetson Thor chips are based on a Blackwell graphics processor, which is Nvidia's current generation of technology used in its AI chips, as well as its chips for computer games. Nvidia said that its Jetson Thor chips are 7.5 times faster than its previous generation. That allows them to run generative AI models, including large language models and visual models that can interpret the world around them, which is essential for humanoid robots, Nvidia said. The Jetson Thor chips are equipped with 128GB of memory, which is essential for big AI models. [...] The company said its Jetson Thor chips can be used for self-driving cars as well, especially from Chinese brands. Nvidia calls its car chips Drive AGX, and while they are similar to its robotics chips, they run an operating system called Drive OS that's been tuned for automotive purposes.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from PYMNTS: Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity has announced a new subscription program called Comet Plus that it said gives users access to premium content from trusted publishers and journalists, while providing publishers with a better compensation model. "Comet Plus transforms how publishers are compensated in the AI age," the company said in a Monday blog post. "As users demand a better internet in the age of AI, it's time for a business model to ensure that publishers and journalists benefit from their contributions to a better internet." Comet Plus is included in Perplexity's Pro and Max memberships and is available as a standalone subscription for $5 per month. Perplexity introduced its Comet AI-powered browser in July, saying the tool lets users answer questions and carry out tasks and research from a single interface. Bloomberg reported Monday that Perplexity has allocated $42.5 million for a revenue sharing program that compensates publishers when their content is used by its Comet browser or AI assistant. The program will use funds that come from Comet Plus and will deliver 80% of the revenue to publishers, with Perplexity getting the other 20%, the report said, citing an interview with Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. "AI is helping to create a better internet, but publishers still need to get paid," Srinivas said in the report. "Sowe think this is actually the right solution, and we're happy to make adjustments along the way."

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The Federal Trade Commission is warning major U.S. tech companies against yielding to foreign government demands that weaken data security, compromise encryption, or impose censorship on their platforms. From a report: FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson signed the letter sent to large American companies like Akamai, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Cloudflare, Discord, GoDaddy, Meta, Microsoft, Signal, Snap, Slack, and X (Twitter). Ferguson stresses that weakening data security at the request of foreign governments, especially if they don't alert users about it, would constitute a violation of the FTC Act and expose companies to legal consequences. Ferguson's letter specifically cites foreign laws such as the EU's Digital Services Act and the UK's Online Safety and Investigatory Powers Acts. Earlier this year, Apple was forced to remove support for iCloud end-to-end encryption in the United Kingdom rather than give in to demands to add a backdoor for the government to access encrypted accounts. The UK's demand would have weakened Apple's encryption globally, but it was retracted last week following U.S. diplomatic pressure.

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Intel said Monday that converting $8.87 billion in federal chip subsidies into a 10% equity stake creates unprecedented complications and potential "adverse reactions" for a company deriving 76% of revenue internationally. The arrangement transforms Biden-era CHIPS Act grants into share purchases at $20.74 -- a discount to Friday's $24.80 close -- with the Department of Commerce receiving up to 433 million shares by Tuesday's expected closing. Foreign governments may impose additional regulations on Intel due to US government ownership, the company warned in securities filings, while the precedent could discourage other nations from offering grants if they expect similar equity conversions. China alone represents 29% of Intel's revenue. The deal also restricts Intel's strategic flexibility, requiring government votes align with board recommendations except on matters affecting federal interests.

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Living through extreme heat waves can accelerate your rate of aging, according to research published Monday. From a report: Scientists analyzed 15 years' worth of health data from nearly 25,000 adults in Taiwan and found that two years of exposure to heat waves could speed up a person's so-called biological aging by eight to 12 extra days. It may not sound like a lot, but this number builds over time, said Cui Guo, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong who led the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. "This small number actually matters," she said. "This was a study of a two-year exposure, but we know heat waves have actually been occurring for decades." The research comes as human-induced climate change is making heat waves more intense and long-lasting. The West Coast of the United States is suffering from sweltering temperatures while Iran is experiencing searing heat. Record-breaking temperatures punished Europe, Japan and Korea earlier this month. France recently experienced its second heat wave of the summer, sparking a national debate over air-conditioning.

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Google will require identity verification for all Android app developers, including those distributing apps outside the Play Store, starting September 2026 in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand before expanding globally through 2027. Developers must register through a new Android Developer Console beginning March 2026. The requirement applies to certified Android devices running Google Mobile Services. Google cited malware prevention as the primary motivation, noting sideloaded apps contain 50 times more malware than Play Store apps. Hobbyist and student developers will receive separate account types. Developer information submitted to Google will not be displayed to users.

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Security researchers have uncovered critical vulnerabilities in Perplexity's Comet browser that enable attackers to hijack user accounts and execute malicious code through the browser's AI summarization features. The flaws, discovered independently by Brave and Guardio Labs, exploit indirect prompt injection attacks that bypass traditional web security mechanisms when users request webpage summaries. Brave demonstrated account takeover through a malicious Reddit post that compromised Perplexity accounts when summarized. The vulnerability allows attackers to embed commands in webpage content that the browser's large language model executes with full user privileges across authenticated sessions. Guardio's testing found the browser would complete phishing transactions and prompt users for banking credentials without warning indicators. The paid browser, available to Perplexity Pro and Enterprise Pro subscribers since July, processes untrusted webpage content without distinguishing between legitimate instructions and attacker payloads.

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A group representing the world's biggest stock exchanges has called on securities regulators to clamp down on so-called tokenised stocks, arguing that the blockchain-based tokens create new risks for investors and could harm market integrity. From a report: Crypto exchange Coinbase and broker Robinhood are among those making a push into the nascent sector that could shake up the securities investing landscape. Proponents say tokenised equities can cut trading costs, speed up settlement and facilitate around-the-clock trading. The World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), in a letter sent to three regulatory bodies last Friday, said it was concerned the tokens "mimic" equities without providing the same rights or trading safeguards.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Elon Musk's AI startup xAI sued Apple and ChatGPT maker OpenAI in U.S. federal court in Texas on Monday, accusing them of illegally conspiring to thwart competition for artificial intelligence. Musk earlier this month had threatened to sue Cupertino, California-based Apple, saying in a post on his social media platform X that "Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store."

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Years of aggressive capacity expansion have driven China's solar manufacturing sector into deep losses. Panel prices have hit their lowest levels since 2011 even as the country's installations more than doubled. Shanghai-listed Tongwei reported a 4.96 billion yuan ($693 million) net loss for the first half of 2025, widening from 3.13 billion yuan a year earlier, while Trina Solar swung to a 2.92 billion yuan loss from a prior-year profit. Panel prices touched 8.7 cents per watt in July, forcing manufacturers to write down inventory values across the polysilicon-to-module supply chain. China installed 212.2 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity through June, bringing total installations to 1.1 terawatts, yet supply continues outpacing demand after seven major manufacturers posted their first combined annual loss in 2024. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology convened leading producers last week to urge shutdowns of outdated capacity, while the China Photovoltaic Industry Association pledged to tackle what it termed "involution-style" competition through strengthened self-discipline measures.

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DHL's German operations, facing the departure of one-third of support staff within five years, has automated customer service calls and begun capturing institutional knowledge through AI-conducted exit interviews. The company's voicebot now processes one million monthly calls, resolving half without human intervention, though initial deployments struggled with basic German language recognition. FT adds: At DHL in Germany, one in three staff working in support operations will retire in the next five years, taking with them decades of institutional memory. "Everyone in Germany understands that if you don't automate and use AI, you won't be able to deal with the shrinking workforce," says Gemein [chief information officer for post and parcels].

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Yahoo Finance interviews Peter Cappelli, a Wharton professor of management, on "the business case for employers pushing for workers to get back to the office." (Cappelli has co-written a new book with workplace strategist Ranya Nehmeh titled In Praise of the Office: The Limits to Hybrid and Remote Work ...) Yahoo Finance: What's wrong with a hybrid work arrangement? Cappelli: People just don't come in. That's maybe the single biggest factor. There is a growing awareness that people are really never there on their anchor days. If you want that for your company, you have to manage that attendance... Yahoo Finance: What's the compelling advantage of in-person work? Cappelli: There's value in human interaction, what we learn from each other, the cooperation that we can get in solving problems, and the motivation and commitment that comes from being around other people... When you first began your career, imagine what it would've been like if no one was in the office. You'd be completely lost. If you think about how we learn about office work, we learn by watching. You learn what the values of the organization are. You learn it from the conversations in the office. You can see how the boss reacts to different requests and different problems. As you advance, you've got your ear to the ground, and you've got the opportunity to raise your hand and pitch in and have some influence. You can catch the boss between meetings and pass along a little tidbit of information, and you develop relationships with people where you can solve problems... Those are the kind of things that we miss when we move to remote — in addition to the general fact that people are energized by working with people. With remote work, people also spend more time in meetings that are worthless. A lot of those things could be fixed, but the problem is they're not. He argues remote work isn't as widespread as it seems. ("In Europe, for example, where employees have always had more power, I figured remote work would stay. It hasn't. Most everybody's gone back to the office.") Even in the U.S., 70% of employers are in-office, all the time. ("[M]ost employers are small. Remote work and hybrid work, in particular, is largely a big city, big company phenomenon... It's only white-collar jobs.") And fewer jobs offered are being offered with remote-working options, he believes, now that the labor market has softened. "CEOs are now thinking we're losing something, and the employee resistance to return to the office has weakened.... The longer you wait, the harder it is to ever get people to come back without a big fight. " Cappelli: Right now, people might be saying, 'I will quit if I have to go back to the office,' but it turns out they don't mean it. The reason, of course, is it's one thing to say that you will quit; it's another to actually walk away from a paycheck... If you opt for remote or hybrid, good outcomes don't happen by themselves. You can make it work, but it requires more time and effort for management, more rules, more practices, more leadership.

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People in Mississippi no longer have access to Bluesky. "If you access Bluesky from a Mississippi IP address, you'll see a message explaining why the app isn't available," announced a Bluesky blog post Friday. The reason is a new Mississippi law that "requires all users to verify their ages before using common social media sites ranging from Facebook to Nextdoor," noted NPR. Bluesky wrote that their block "will remain in place while the courts decide whether the law will stand." [U]nder the law, we would need to verify every user's age and obtain parental consent for anyone under 18. The potential penalties for non-compliance are substantial — up to $10,000 per user. Building the required verification systems, parental consent workflows, and compliance infrastructure would require significant resources that our small team is currently unable to spare. Bluesky also notes that the law "requires collecting and storing sensitive personal information from all users...not just those accessing age-restricted content" — and that this information would include "detailed tracking of minors." TechCrunch notes that even blocking Mississippi has created some problems: Some Bluesky users outside Mississippi subsequently reported issues accessing the service due to their cell providers routing traffic through servers in the state, with CTO Paul Frazee responding Saturday that the company was "working deploy an update to our location detection that we hope will solve some inaccuracies." The company's blog post notes that its decision only applies to the Bluesky app built on the AT Protocol. Other apps may approach the decision differently. Interestingly, the law had been immediately challenged by NetChoice (a trade association of major tech companies). But while a District Court agreed, blocking the law from going into effect (until court challenges finished), an Appeals Court then lifted that block. A final appeal to America's Supreme Court was unsuccessful — although the ruling by Justice Kavanaugh suggests the law could be overturned later: "To be clear, NetChoice has, in my view, demonstrated that it is likely to succeed on the merits — namely, that enforcement of the Mississippi law would likely violate its members' First Amendment rights under this Court's precedents... [U]nder this Court's case law as it currently stands, the Mississippi law is likely unconstitutional. Nonetheless, because NetChoice has not sufficiently demonstrated that the balance of harms and equities favors it at this time, I concur in the Court's denial of the application for interim relief."

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More than 30,000 Python developers from around the world answered questions for the Python Software Foundation's annual survey — and PSF Fellow Michael Kennedy tells the Python community what they've learned in a new blog post. Some highlights: Most still use older Python versions despite benefits of newer releases... Many of us (15%) are running on the very latest released version of Python, but more likely than not, we're using a version a year old or older (83%). [Although less than 1% are using "Python 3.5 or lower".] The survey also indicates that many of us are using Docker and containers to execute our code, which makes this 83% or higher number even more surprising... You simply choose a newer runtime, and your code runs faster. CPython has been extremely good at backward compatibility. There's rarely significant effort involved in upgrading... [He calculates some cloud users are paying up to $420,000 and $5.6M more in compute costs.] If your company realizes you are burning an extra $0.4M-$5M a year because you haven't gotten around to spending the day it takes to upgrade, that'll be a tough conversation... Rust is how we speed up Python now... The Python Language Summit of 2025 revealed that "Somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of all native code being uploaded to PyPI for new projects uses Rust", indicating that "people are choosing to start new projects using Rust". Looking into the survey results, we see that Rust usage grew from 27% to 33% for binary extensions to Python packages... [The blog post later advises Python developers to learn to read basic Rust, "not to replace Python, but to complement it," since Rust "is becoming increasingly important in the most significant portions of the Python ecosystem."] PostgreSQL is the king of Python databases, and only it's growing, going from 43% to 49%. That's +14% year over year, which is remarkable for a 28-year-old open-source project... [E]very single database in the top six grew in usage year over year. This is likely another indicator that web development itself is growing again, as discussed above... [N]early half of the respondents (49%) plan to try AI coding agents in the coming year. Program managers at major tech companies have stated that they almost cannot hire developers who don't embrace agentic AI. The productive delta between those using it and those who avoid it is simply too great (estimated at about 30% greater productivity with AI). It's their eighth annual survey (conducted in collaboration with JetBrains last October and November). But even though Python is 34 years old, it's still evolving. "In just the past few months, we have seen two new high-performance typing tools released," notes the blog post. (The ty and Pyrefly typecheckers — both written in Rust.) And Python 3.14 will be the first version of Python to completely support free-threaded Python... Just last week, the steering council and core developers officially accepted this as a permanent part of the language and runtime... Developers and data scientists will have to think more carefully about threaded code with locks, race conditions, and the performance benefits that come with it. Package maintainers, especially those with native code extensions, may have to rewrite some of their code to support free-threaded Python so they themselves do not enter race conditions and deadlocks. There is a massive upside to this as well. I'm currently writing this on the cheapest Apple Mac Mini M4. This computer comes with 10 CPU cores. That means until this change manifests in Python, the maximum performance I can get out of a single Python process is 10% of what my machine is actually capable of. Once free-threaded Python is fully part of the ecosystem, I should get much closer to maximum capacity with a standard Python program using threading and the async and await keywords. Some other notable findings from the survey: Data science is now over half of all Python. This year, 51% of all surveyed Python developers are involved in data exploration and processing, with pandas and NumPy being the tools most commonly used for this. Exactly 50% of respondents have less than two years of professional coding experience! And 39% have less than two years of experience with Python (even in hobbyist or educational settings)... "The survey tells us that one-third of devs contributed to open source. This manifests primarily as code and documentation/tutorial additions."

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"For a few dozen people in the world, the downside of living with a rare immune condition comes with a surprising superpower — the ability to fight off all viruses..." notes an announcement from Columbia University. "At first, the condition only seemed to increase vulnerability to some bacterial infections. But as more patients were identified, its unexpected antiviral benefits became apparent." Columbia immunologist Dusan Bogunovic discovered the individuals' antiviral powers about 15 years ago, soon after he identified the genetic mutation that causes the condition... Bogunovic, a professor of pediatric immunology at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, soon learned that everyone with the mutation, which causes a deficiency in an immune regulator called ISG15, has mild, but persistent systemic inflammation... "In the back of my mind, I kept thinking that if we could produce this type of light immune activation in other people, we could protect them from just about any virus," Bogunovic says. Today, Bogunovic is closing in on a therapeutic strategy that could provide that broad-spectrum protection against viruses and become an important weapon in next pandemic. In his latest study, published August 13 in Science Translational Medicine, Bogunovic and his team report that an experimental therapy they've developed temporarily gives recipients (hamsters and mice, so far) the same antiviral superpower as people with ISG15 deficiency. When administered prophylactically into the animals' lungs via a nasal drip, the therapy prevented viral replication of influenza and SARS-CoV-2 viruses and lessened disease severity. In cell culture, "we have yet to find a virus that can break through the therapy's defenses," Bogunovic says... Bogunovic's therapeutic turns on production of 10 proteins that are primarily responsible for the broad antiviral protection. The current design resembles COVID mRNA vaccines but with a twist: Ten mRNAs encoding the 10 proteins are packaged inside a lipid nanoparticle. Once the nanoparticles are absorbed by the recipient's cells, the cells generate the ten host proteins to produce the antiviral protection. "We only generate a small amount of these ten proteins, for a very short time, and that leads to much less inflammation than what we see in ISG15-deficient individuals," Bogunovic says. "But that inflammation is enough to prevent antiviral diseases...." "We believe the technology will work even if we don't know the identity of the virus," Bogunovic says. Importantly, the antiviral protection provided by the technology will not prevent people from developing their own immunological memory to the virus for longer-term protection. "Our findings reinforce the power of research driven by curiosity without preconceived notions," Bogunovic says in the announcement. "We were not looking for an antiviral when we began studying our rare patients, but the studies have inspired the potential development of a universal antiviral for everyone." More coverage from ScienceAlert.

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"A fierce dust storm hit the Black Rock Desert on the eve of its annual Burning Man festival," reports the San Francisco Chronicle, "causing at least four minor injuries and damaging campsites that had been set up early." [Alternate URL] "Winds of up to 50 mph stirred up the lake bed's alkaline dust so ferociously that participants in the annual art and culture festival reported not being able to see beyond a foot... " The dust storm arrived Saturday evening after strong thunderstorms in the Sierra Nevada drifted off the mountains and whipped up strong winds in the Nevada desert... At 5:14 p.m. Saturday, the weather service issued a dust storm advisory for Black Rock City and warned of "a wall of blowing dust coming off the Smoke Creek and Black Rock Desert playa areas is tracking northward at around 30 mph." The agency warned of visibility less than 1 mile and wind gusts exceeding 45 mph. A weather station at Black Rock City Airport measured gusts up to 52 mph at 5:50 p.m... ["We saw structures being ripped and torn down by the wind speeds even though we buttoned everything down as best as we could..." one Burner told the Chronicle.] Camp residents posted a slew of videos to social media featuring dust tornadoes, destroyed campsites, and fellow campers struggling to hold onto bucking canvases as the wind threatened to rip them away. "Every popup canopy I've seen has been destroyed," one Burner wrote on Reddit... ["Make sure you carry your particle/dust mask and goggles with you when you venture out on playa!" warns Burning Man's official weather page.] Even after Saturday's storm, Burners won't be out of the woods from hazardous weather. The weather service warned of possible monsoon thunderstorms and heavy rain Sunday through Wednesday, raising concerns that this year's festival could echo disastrous 2023 conditions, when heavy storms stranded tens of thousands of attendees amid thick mud. "It's becoming increasingly likely that we could see an even greater flash flood threat," the weather service wrote in an online forecast. "If you're on the playa at the Black Rock Desert, you may very well be in for a muddy mess Monday through Wednesday." Slow-moving storms could drop an inch of rain or more in a short period. "Still, gates to the festival had opened by Sunday morning," the article adds, "with organizers cautioning new arrivals to 'drive safely!'" Burning Man's official weather page currently links to a National Weather Service page with a "Flood Watch" warning through 9 p.m. Sunday, and also predicting a chance of thunderstorms on Sunday and Monday.

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