Rainstorms have prompted the temporary closure of the annual Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, putting a damper on the annual convergence of more than 50,000 hippies and hipsters—many from Silicon Valley.
Officials of Black Rock City LLC, which puts on the normally dust-choked revelry, asked state and local law enforcement Monday to turn away so-called "Burners" after storms drenched its location on a playa 110 miles northeast of Reno. Calls to the firm weren't immediately returned, but a statement it posted on Facebook FB +0.60% attributed the shutdown to undrivable conditions on the playa on what would have been opening day.
"Drivers are being instructed to find a safe location to park until the expected re-opening of the event on Tuesday," Black Rock City said in the statement.
Some Burners vented their frustrations on social media. "Each day I'm stuck in Reno the selfie gets progressively more angry," wrote 28-year-old Aaron Hoffmeyer, a technology analyst from San Francisco, in posting a mockingly stern expression of himself on Twitter.
Officials of Black Rock City LLC, which puts on the normally dust-choked revelry, asked state and local law enforcement Monday to turn away so-called "Burners" after storms drenched its location on a playa 110 miles northeast of Reno. Calls to the firm weren't immediately returned, but a statement it posted on Facebook FB +0.60% attributed the shutdown to undrivable conditions on the playa on what would have been opening day.
"Drivers are being instructed to find a safe location to park until the expected re-opening of the event on Tuesday," Black Rock City said in the statement.
Some Burners vented their frustrations on social media. "Each day I'm stuck in Reno the selfie gets progressively more angry," wrote 28-year-old Aaron Hoffmeyer, a technology analyst from San Francisco, in posting a mockingly stern expression of himself on Twitter.
Other techies poked a little fun. "Extinguished Man," Alexia Tsotsis, co-editor of the technology news site Tech Crunch, termed the festival on Twitter.
Burners include some of the elite of the tech world, with entire camps populated by employees and executives from companies such as Facebook Inc., whose chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg has been an attendee. They build elaborate art sculptures and drive unusual vehicles in a bash that ends after the ceremonial burning of a giant wooden effigy—the burning man.
The festival originated in 1986 with just 20 people attending on a San Francisco beach. As it grew, it moved in 1991 to the Black Rock Desert outside Gerlach, Nev., and has been held there ever since. The festival, often plagued by massive dust storms, has grown so big in recent years that it draws a large presence of law enforcement, and miles-long traffic jams.
Twitch, which was founded in 2011, is not exactly a household name. But it's clear the service is catching on in the gaming world.
With more than 55 million visitors per month, Twitch calls itself the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.
Twitch represented a whopping 1.35% of all Internet traffic in March, according to networking company Sandvine. To put that into perspective, Twitch generated more traffic than even HBO GO, Sandvine said. (HBO is owned by CNNMoney parent Time Warner (TWX)).
Teaming up with Amazon should give Twitch the resources it needs to maintain and even build on that impressive growth.
"Being part of Amazon will let us do even more for our community. We will be able to create tools and services faster than we could have independently," said Twitch CEO Emmett Shear.
With more than 55 million visitors per month, Twitch calls itself the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.
Twitch represented a whopping 1.35% of all Internet traffic in March, according to networking company Sandvine. To put that into perspective, Twitch generated more traffic than even HBO GO, Sandvine said. (HBO is owned by CNNMoney parent Time Warner (TWX)).
Teaming up with Amazon should give Twitch the resources it needs to maintain and even build on that impressive growth.
"Being part of Amazon will let us do even more for our community. We will be able to create tools and services faster than we could have independently," said Twitch CEO Emmett Shear.
Should really be quite easy. Murray is through to the second round,
where he will play Matthias Bachinger of Germany, who beat Radek
Stepanek in three sets today. That he’s through is the only thing that
totally matters, but it does also matter that Murray was rarely remotely
approaching convincing, tied up badly with cramp in the third set, and
ended up limping over the line perhaps – perhaps – because his opponent
had eaten something that didn’t agree with him.
For
most seeded players in the United States Open, the opening matches are a
chance to work out a few wrinkles, shake off some rust and become used
to the swirling winds, the warm conditions and the speed of the courts.
But
Monday, many high seeds and big names instead fended off calamity in a
stream of matches that turned out to be more adventurous than expected.
At
the head of that list was Andy Murray, who took a two-sets-to-none lead
over Robin Haase of the Netherlands, only to find himself fighting
relentless muscle cramps in his legs and back. Murray, seeded eighth and
two years removed from winning his first Grand Slam title here,
began grabbing various muscles in the third set. He paced in front of
his chair instead of sitting during changeovers and did everything he
could to keep himself in the match.
He
finally won, 6-3, 7-6 (6), 1-6, 7-5, as Haase seemed in nearly as much
discomfort as Murray, although he was less demonstrative about it.
“There were parts of that match that weren’t particularly pretty to
watch, but I’m just happy to get through,” said Murray, who has had a
tough season battling back from back surgery and has not won a
tournament in more than a year. The unlikely trouble hardly stopped at
Murray’s match. No. 2 seed Simona Halep found herself fighting off a
challenge from an American college sophomore. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, seeded
ninth and playing great tennis on hardcourts leading up to the U.S. Open, dropped a set and needed a tiebreaker to win another in a 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (2), 6-1 victory over Juan Mónaco.
Venus Williams, 34, seeded 19th but playing one of the few touring players older than she is — Kimiko Date-Krumm, 43 — started out by spraying errors all over the court before rallying to win, 2-6, 6-3, 6-3.
That victory required Williams to overcome 36 unforced errors, 19 of them in the first set. In the third set, both players were hounded by bees, enough that Williams called for help. The trespassing bee was then ushered away by a ball boy and ball girl armed with towels.
Asked what was more troublesome, the bee or Date-Krumm, Williams laughed: “That’s a tough question. The bee was annoying, but Kimiko was tougher. She hits the ball like no one else on tour.”
No. 21 Mikhail Youzhny discovered the chaotic theme of the day the hard way, losing in four sets, 7-5, 7-6(4), 2-6, 7-6(1), to Nick Kyrgios, a 19-year-old Australian. But even though the 60th-ranked Kyrgios is unseeded at the Open, he is not an unknown quantity, having knocked Rafael Nadal out of Wimbledon. Kyrgios takes full advantage of the energy of youth, relentlessly pushing the pace of the match.
Kyrgios snatched the first two sets before wobbling. He became so frustrated he earned three code violations, one for hitting a ball nearly out of Court 17.
“It just comes from having high expectations most of the time,” said Kyrgios, who would have defaulted the match with one more code violation. “I have been an emotional player most of my career. Maybe I will be able to manage it in the future.”
When Youzhny looked as if he might send the match to a fifth set, Kyrgios came back from a breakdown in the fourth to grab victory in a tiebreaker.
“I was struggling a little bit about that two-and-a-half-hour mark, but I knew that if I hung in I would get that second wind where I could start playing good tennis again,” Kyrgios said.
The same could be said for Halep, who seemed to be on the verge of coming unglued in the first set of her 6-7 (2), 6-1, 6-2 victory over Danielle Rose Collins.
That victory required Williams to overcome 36 unforced errors, 19 of them in the first set. In the third set, both players were hounded by bees, enough that Williams called for help. The trespassing bee was then ushered away by a ball boy and ball girl armed with towels.
Asked what was more troublesome, the bee or Date-Krumm, Williams laughed: “That’s a tough question. The bee was annoying, but Kimiko was tougher. She hits the ball like no one else on tour.”
No. 21 Mikhail Youzhny discovered the chaotic theme of the day the hard way, losing in four sets, 7-5, 7-6(4), 2-6, 7-6(1), to Nick Kyrgios, a 19-year-old Australian. But even though the 60th-ranked Kyrgios is unseeded at the Open, he is not an unknown quantity, having knocked Rafael Nadal out of Wimbledon. Kyrgios takes full advantage of the energy of youth, relentlessly pushing the pace of the match.
Kyrgios snatched the first two sets before wobbling. He became so frustrated he earned three code violations, one for hitting a ball nearly out of Court 17.
“It just comes from having high expectations most of the time,” said Kyrgios, who would have defaulted the match with one more code violation. “I have been an emotional player most of my career. Maybe I will be able to manage it in the future.”
When Youzhny looked as if he might send the match to a fifth set, Kyrgios came back from a breakdown in the fourth to grab victory in a tiebreaker.
“I was struggling a little bit about that two-and-a-half-hour mark, but I knew that if I hung in I would get that second wind where I could start playing good tennis again,” Kyrgios said.
The same could be said for Halep, who seemed to be on the verge of coming unglued in the first set of her 6-7 (2), 6-1, 6-2 victory over Danielle Rose Collins.
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