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Getting Too Little Sleep Makes You Easier to Scam

TIME — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 15:08:20 +0000

—Moor Studio—Getty Images

When Daylight Saving Time (DST) begins each March and the clocks spring forward, people lose an hour of sleep. This sleep deprivation has been linked to a higher rate of fatal car accidents the week after—but that’s not the only lingering effect of lost sleep.

A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where phishing emails were sent to more than 10,000 people, found that the Monday after DST began, people were 13% more likely to click on the links within a suspicious message.

What the new study showed

The idea for the study was inspired by a routine cybersecurity test, says study author Eitan Schechtman, a professor of neurobiology and behavior at University of California, Irvine. “My university runs this program in which they send phishing emails every few months,” he says, in order to educate employees about how to spot them. Phishing emails resemble legitimate messages and are designed to spoof recipients into giving up personal data. “I was wondering, as a sleep researcher, what sleep would do to that,” he says.

He arranged with the university’s IT team to have spoof emails sent to half of recipients the Monday before the transition to DST in 2026 and half the Monday after, to compare how people responded. The DST shift is a well-established source of mild sleep deprivation, making it a simple way to test the idea.

The time change made no difference in terms of how likely people were to open the fishy emails, nor did it change how likely they were to report them as spam. But it was linked to a greater likelihood of clicking on links in the emails—which, if the emails had been real scams, would have taken recipients to fake websites or otherwise compromised their security.

“Our interpretation of this is that sleep loss rendered people more impulsive and less likely to carefully think about their decisions, so they open the email and they’re like, ‘OK, here’s this link. I’ll just click it.’” Schechtman says. “They didn’t have their full mental capacity to critically examine whether this might be an email that’s trying to lead them astray.”

A number of factors can play into whether people fall for phishing scams, including stress levels and high workloads, as well as differences in personality traits like impulsiveness, says Jason R.C. Nurse, a professor at the University of Kent in the U.K. who was not involved in the new study. “Sleep deprivation can fit this profile in some ways because it has a direct impact on our decision-making and state of mind,” he says. “If we’re not thinking properly or rationally about what we’re seeing in our inboxes, there’s every chance that we might get caught out and fall for a phishing attempt.”

Does it apply in the fall as well?

When clocks fall back, as they did on Nov. 1 in the U.S., people hypothetically have more time to sleep—not less. Does that mean people would be less likely to click on the links afterward?

Schechtman suspects not. “When you are given an extra hour, you unfortunately rarely use it to sleep more. A lot of times you use it to stay awake longer or enjoy your weekend a bit more,” he says. “My guess is, and previous studies have shown, that you don’t gain as much sleep from the fall transition as you lose in the spring.”

That said, “I asked the journal to delay publication until right now, because we collected data for this last transition as well,” he says. “None of my colleagues, none of my students knew that we were running this, because I wanted it to be secret,” he says, to enable this last round of data collection to happen before people learned about the work.

He hasn’t analyzed the new data yet; they will appear in a later study. And because his colleagues now know what he was secretly up to, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to do a similar study again. “But I hope that other institutions will follow suit and replicate this,” he says. “It would be really cool to see.”

The post Getting Too Little Sleep Makes You Easier to Scam appeared first on TIME.

Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO after affair with alleged spy

Washington Post — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 15:05:41 +0000

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned Thursday amid reports of two affairs that included a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy, a stunning downfall for one of the world’s most powerful executives.

“Jensen’s contributions to NVIDIA are profound. NVIDIA is one of the most consequential technology companies in the world,” the company’s board said in a statement. “The Board and the company thank Jensen for his immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry.”

The board met Wednesday to assess his future, and the company’s stock price was down at least 9 percent in early trading Thursday.

Colette Kress, current chief financial officer of Nvidia, will serve as interim CEO. She has been with the company since 2013.

The chipmaker now faces the unenviable task of filling the hole left by Huang, who is synonymous with Nvidia. The board said in its Thursday statement that it was initiating a search for a permanent CEO and would look at internal and external candidates.

Huang built Nvidia from a developer of graphics cards used in video game computers to controlling the precious chips used to develop artificial intelligence. The company is one of the heavyweights in a stock market heavily reliant on AI, and he enjoys a close relationship with President Donald Trump, who sought to defend Huang as late as Monday.

Up until Thursday, Nvidia’s board had no official chair, an unusual arrangement compared with peer companies that signaled Huang’s dominance there. Now, the board has appointed its first ever chair, Harvey C. Jones, a venture capitalist who joined in 1993, the year of the company’s founding.

Prior to his resignation, Huang was Nvidia’s largest shareholder, owning about 3.6 percent of the company — enough to make him one of the wealthiest people in the world but a small percentage relative to other tech titans.

Nvidia is set to report earnings Tuesday.

Clad in his signature leather jacket, Huang is an evangelist for the AI boom and garnered the crowd attention of a pop star on recent visits to Seoul and his birthplace of Taiwan.

Nvidia’s board said Sunday that it was investigating Huang’s conduct after he said in a note to the company that he had an affair with a onetime executive at a Singapore-based company who has been accused of being a Chinese spy.

Even then, many analysts had doubted that Huang, who tightly controlled Nvidia over the 33 years since its founding, could lose his perch at the company.

But the tide appeared to turn against Huang Wednesday night after the New York Times reported that, in addition to his affair with the Chinese executive, he also had an intimate relationship with a Nvidia executive who reported to him.

Huang has been a close ally of Trump since his election last year. But as of Wednesday night, the White House was not intervening in the board’s decision, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Nvidia is crucial to propping up the stock market, with the Trump administration embracing the AI boom as driving the next chapter of the American economy.

Nvidia has retained the law firm of former federal prosecutor Joon Kim, who investigated allegations of sexual harassment against New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in 2021, to conduct its investigation of Huang.

In Washington, questions have circulated about when the Trump administration knew about Huang’s relationship with the suspected Chinese spy and whether it acted on those warnings. Trump denied to reporters that he was aware of the situation during a May trip to China, where Huang flew on Air Force One. The Post and other news organizations have reported that Trump was in fact briefed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio shortly before Huang joined the presidential plane.

Late Wednesday, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and Chris Coons (Delaware) sent a letter to Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller demanding that they preserve documents related to Nvidia.

Still, in Silicon Valley, Huang has enjoyed a drumbeat of support from investors and other tech figures.

“Seems ill advised for Nvidia’s board to oust Jensen Huang given how central his leadership is to the operations of an engine of our future abundance,” Garry Tan, the CEO of the influential start-up incubator Y Combinator, wrote on X about an hour after reports of Huang’s second affair. “His day to day is prime actor work. Would be hard to believe a transition happens without massive market cap implosion.”

The post Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO after affair with alleged spy appeared first on Washington Post.

Why People Are Getting Horny Over Flip-Flops

VICE — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 15:03:24 +0000

The slap of a cheap rubber sandal against a hardwood floor is doing it for some people. Yes, we’re talking about flip-flops. The same shoes you throw on to take out the trash or wear to the beach without giving them a second thought.

According to adult content platform RedGIFs, flip-flops have developed their own small fetish community. The group reportedly has around 1,200 members and 566 posts, compared with roughly 19,000 members in a high-heel community. So we’re talking about a relatively small audience here, although RedGIFs has an obvious interest in promoting what people are watching on its platform.

Sexologist Becky Crepsley Fox told Metro that some of the attraction could come from the sound, since “the slap of a flip-flop as someone walks can echo the sounds of sex.” Flip-flops put the entire foot on display, and there’s no shortage of people who find that sexy.

Flip-Flops Are Apparently Turning People On, and There’s a Surprising Reason Why

Foot fetishes have been around much longer than the internet’s latest fascination with cheap sandals. A 2007 study from the University of Bologna examined 381 online fetish discussion groups and found that feet accounted for 47% of the interest in specific body parts. Shoes and other items associated with feet were popular, too. The researchers were studying people already involved in fetish communities, though, so the numbers don’t tell us how common these interests are among everyone else.

Sex researcher Justin Lehmiller found something similar when he surveyed more than 4,000 Americans for his book Tell Me What You Want. About one in seven reported having fantasized about feet or toes, although having the occasional fantasy is different from having a fetish.

Scientists have spent years trying to explain why feet are sexually exciting to some people. Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran suggested that the brain areas responsible for processing sensations from the feet and genitals sit close enough together that signals could become confused.

It’s an interesting theory, but a 2014 study in Cortex involving around 800 participants found little support for that explanation. Feet received low ratings for erotic sensitivity, and the researchers couldn’t establish the proposed connection. That study focused on pleasurable touch, however, rather than the visual attraction involved in many fetishes.

As for flip-flops, there’s no evidence they’ve suddenly become everyone’s new sexual obsession. Some people love feet, some love shoes, and a small number seem especially enthusiastic about the combination.

Who knew a pair of shoes you can buy at a gas station could have such a devoted following?

The post Why People Are Getting Horny Over Flip-Flops appeared first on VICE.

NFL Week 10 picks: Packers prevail over Vikings; Steelers beat Bengals

Los Angeles Times — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 15:01:51 +0000

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Los Angeles Times NFL writer Sam Farmer examines the matchups and makes his predictions for Week 10 of the NFL season.

All lines and over/under numbers are according to FanDuel Sportsbook.

Last week, Farmer posted an 15-0 record. Through the first nine weeks of the season, he is 89-47 (.654).

Using point spreads with the scores Farmer predicted, his record against the spread in Week 9 would have been 12-3 (.800). For the season, his record against the spread is 65-71 (.478).

All times are Pacific and TV reflects broadcasts in the Los Angeles area. The Bears, Broncos, Buccaneers and Eagles are off this week.