We use our smartphones just about everywhere, even in the bathroom, although we may not want to talk about that. A recent study of colonoscopy patients revealed that most used their phones on the toilet at least once a week — and that those phone-on-the-toilet users showed a 46% increased risk for hemorrhoids.

The cause and effect are clear. Caught up in news, games or social media, bathroom users stay seated on the throne longer, with research showing phone users tend to spend more than 5 minutes doing their business. The study says that hemorrhoids are associated with prolonged sitting on the toilet, as well as constipation and increased straining.

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What the study reveals

The 125 colonoscopy patients at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Study who participated in the study answered questions about their bathroom phone habits, and endoscopists evaluated their hemorrhoids (just in case you think you have a bad job). Of all the respondents, 66% used smartphones while sitting on the toilet, and those participants tended to be younger than those who didn’t. More than a third (37.3%) of smartphone users spent more than 5 minutes sitting on the toilet per visit, while only 7.1% of those without smartphones spent that long seated.

When the numbers were adjusted for age, sex, BMI, exercise activity and «straining and fiber intake,» results showed a 46% increased risk for hemorrhoids. Men were more likely than women to spend 6 minutes or more on the toilet, in case you wondered.

Those who used smartphones while on the toilet also admitted to getting less exercise than those who didn’t, which the researchers said «could signify a higher level of engagement with technology and a more sedentary lifestyle outside of the toileting environment.» (Yes, «toileting environment.» Otherwise known as just «the toilet.»)

The most common toilet phone activity was reading news, with 54.3% admitting to doing so, and 44.4% saying they were participating in social media while on the toilet.

The study didn’t directly connect constipation with time spent on the toilet, but Dr. Eamonn Quigley, chairman of gastroenterology at Houston Methodist, told The New York Times that it’s likely those who sit hunched over their phones while on the toilet might be more likely to experience constipation.

What all this means for you

If you’re grossed out by the idea of your phone being in close connection with toilet time, you’re not alone. Doctors told the NYT the obvious: Fecal material can get on your hands while you’re wiping and be transferred to your phone, and flushing with the toilet lid open can also spray fecal matter onto your phone. Sure, you wash your hands, but now the stuff is on your phone, so it jumps right back on your hands after you dry them and start scrolling again.

In short, you’re probably going to scroll your phone while occupied in the bathroom. But this study notes that you should be aware that the phone’s fun distractions might make you sit there longer than you planned and that could have painful consequences.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a fun one. Hope you know your poker! If you’re struggling but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Team you’re up against.

Green group hint: Poker phrases.

Blue group hint: Mr. November.

Purple group hint: Wave a red cape.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Opponent.

Green group: Texas Hold ‘Em terms.

Blue group: Associated with Derek Jeter.

Purple group: ____ Bulls.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is opponent. The four answers are adversary, foe, nemesis and rival.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is Texas Hold ‘Em terms. The four answers are blind, flop, river and turn.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is associated with Derek Jeter.  The four answers are 2, captain, New York and shortstop.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ Bulls.  The four answers are Buffalo, Chicago, Red and South Florida.

AMD and Sony jointly teased AMD’s approach to improving its future graphics hardware performance in a video posted to YouTube this week: compression, aggregation and dedication. Compressing all the data in the graphics pipeline for lower memory overhead, aggregating the compute units that process the data for faster matrix multiplication (key to improving AI performance, including upscaling) and finally adding dedicated silicon to handle ray and path tracing acceleration, necessary to bump up visual quality. 

Sony’s involvement immediately sent everyone’s heads into PlayStation 6 rumorspace: AMD’s chips power Sony’s PlayStation consoles, and that’s pretty much the only place where the two companies intersect, at least for the moment. 

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AMD powers almost all consoles, from the Xbox to the Steam Deck, with the Nintendo Switch line one of the few exceptions (it’s based on Nvidia chips). It’s also in laptops and the company’s own graphics cards. If you want to game on a laptop that won’t blow your budget, better integrated graphics are always in your best interest.

The three new technologies teased in the AMD video are:

Radiance Cores: My testing over the years has shown that AMD has long lagged Nvidia with respect to ray tracing performance (which is not just for pretty reflections — it improves lighting significantly), and that’s at least partly because its processing takes place in its main compute unit cores, which are optimized for processing other types of graphics. So ray tracing bogs your frame rates down a lot. And the one-core-one-ray-trace-unit architecture limits the amount of processing you can throw at it to improve. The Radiance Cores handle the ray tracing acceleration separately, similar to the way Nvidia’s RT cores do.

Neural Array: Matrix multiplication is the key algorithm for accelerating AI processing on-device — it’s what Tensor cores handle, for example — and these days, upscaling is driven by AI-heavy, machine learning-informed algorithms, like Nvidia’s DLSS and Intel’s XeSS. Upscaling is important because it’s a major way to run at higher resolutions without taking a performance hit, and in many ways is at the center of a suite of technologies for improving image fidelity and performance. AMD’s version is FidelityFX Super Resolution, and its next-generation of the technology, FSR Redstone (likely part of RDNA 5), will need those arrays, as well as Sony’s variation of it, PSSR.

Universal Compression: The less compressed your data is, the more memory it takes to process and the slower it moves through a pipeline. Traditionally, graphics processors have stuck to compressing only the biggest memory hogs, starting with textures, in part because there was a performance cost to inserting it into the processing pipeline. But silicon is so much faster than it used to be that it likely makes sense to use it for all the graphics data, which is how Universal Compression works. Even if performance is a wash, it probably means less memory is required, an important factor for 4K and higher gaming as well as prices.

This tease is the first of probably a zillion for both new technologies in the PS6 and AMD’s RDNA 5, and I’d expect to hear a lot more about it at CES in January 2026, if not sooner. I’ve reached out to AMD for more details, but didn’t immediately hear back.