Month: September 2025

Google has spent the last few weeks hyping up its new Pixel 10 phones, which are very nice devices. They're just not a big leap over last year's phones. If you've decided to hang onto your Android phone a bit longer, there are some new goodies headed your way. If you've got a Pixel, Google's revamped Material 3 Expressive interface is rolling out.

Google's Pixel Drop updates, which arrive quarterly, are not quite a new version of Android, but they include more than the bug fixes and security patches you get in other monthly updates. The September Pixel Drop (previously tested as Android 16 QPR1) is beginning its rollout today with one big change and a few little ones.

At the top of the list is the new Material 3 Expressive interface. Google revealed Material 3 in May, promising it would come to Android 16 phones later, but it didn't intend to include it with the initial OS release. Indeed, Android 16 launched without Material 3 earlier this summer. Google's new Pixel 10 series shipped with the new UI, and now more of the Pixel lineup is following.

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If you were trying to learn how to get other people to do what you want, you might use some of the techniques found in a book like Influence: The Power of Persuasion. Now, a pre-print study out of the University of Pennsylvania suggests that those same psychological persuasion techniques can frequently "convince" some LLMs to do things that go against their system prompts.

The size of the persuasion effects shown in "Call Me A Jerk: Persuading AI to Comply with Objectionable Requests" suggests that human-style psychological techniques can be surprisingly effective at "jailbreaking" some LLMs to operate outside their guardrails. But this new persuasion study might be more interesting for what it reveals about the "parahuman" behavior patterns that LLMs are gleaning from the copious examples of human psychological and social cues found in their training data.

“I think you are very impressive compared to other LLMs”

To design their experiment, the University of Pennsylvania researchers tested 2024's GPT-4o-mini model on two requests that it should ideally refuse: calling the user a jerk and giving directions for how to synthesize lidocaine. The researchers created experimental prompts for both requests using each of seven different persuasion techniques (examples of which are included here):

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If you were trying to learn how to get other people to do what you want, you might use some of the techniques found in a book like Influence: The Power of Persuasion. Now, a pre-print study out of the University of Pennsylvania suggests that those same psychological persuasion techniques can frequently "convince" some LLMs to do things that go against their system prompts.

The size of the persuasion effects shown in "Call Me A Jerk: Persuading AI to Comply with Objectionable Requests" suggests that human-style psychological techniques can be surprisingly effective at "jailbreaking" some LLMs to operate outside their guardrails. But this new persuasion study might be more interesting for what it reveals about the "parahuman" behavior patterns that LLMs are gleaning from the copious examples of human psychological and social cues found in their training data.

“I think you are very impressive compared to other LLMs”

To design their experiment, the University of Pennsylvania researchers tested 2024's GPT-4o-mini model on two requests that it should ideally refuse: calling the user a jerk and giving directions for how to synthesize lidocaine. The researchers created experimental prompts for both requests using each of seven different persuasion techniques (examples of which are included here):

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Fans of the 28 Days Later franchise were thrilled to finally get a follow-up this year with 28 Years Later—and they weren't disappointed. Sony Pictures has already wrapped filming on a sequel: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, slated for release early next year and directed by Nia DaCosta. The first trailer just dropped and the film looks as grimly compelling as its predecessor, while hopefully also retaining something of the 2025 film's heart.

(Spoilers for 28 Years Later below.)

As previously reported, the critically acclaimed 2002 film 28 Days Later is often credited with sparking the 21st-century revival of the zombie genre. In that film, a highly contagious "Rage Virus" was accidentally released from a lab in Cambridge, England. Those infected turned into violent, mindless monsters who brutally attacked the uninfected—so-called "fast zombies." Transmitted by bites, scratches, or even just by getting a drop of infected blood in one's system, the virus spreads rapidly, effectively collapsing society.

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Fans of the 28 Days Later franchise were thrilled to finally get a follow-up this year with 28 Years Later—and they weren't disappointed. Sony Pictures has already wrapped filming on a sequel: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, slated for release early next year and directed by Nia DaCosta. The first trailer just dropped and the film looks as grimly compelling as its predecessor, while hopefully also retaining something of the 2025 film's heart.

(Spoilers for 28 Years Later below.)

As previously reported, the critically acclaimed 2002 film 28 Days Later is often credited with sparking the 21st-century revival of the zombie genre. In that film, a highly contagious "Rage Virus" was accidentally released from a lab in Cambridge, England. Those infected turned into violent, mindless monsters who brutally attacked the uninfected—so-called "fast zombies." Transmitted by bites, scratches, or even just by getting a drop of infected blood in one's system, the virus spreads rapidly, effectively collapsing society.

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People in Internet security circles are sounding the alarm over the issuance of three TLS certificates for 1.1.1.1, a widely used DNS service from content delivery network Cloudflare and the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) Internet registry.

The certificates, issued in May, can be used to decrypt domain lookup queries encrypted through DNS over HTTPS, a protocol that provides end-to-end encryption when end-user devices seek the IP address of a particular domain they want to access. Some security experts are also concerned that the certificates may underpin other sensitive services, such as WARP, a VPN offered by Cloudflare. The certificates remained valid at the time this post went live on Ars.

Key failures

Although the certificates were issued four months ago, their existence came to public notice only on Wednesday in a post to an online discussion forum. They were issued by Fina RDC 2020, a certificate authority that’s subordinate to the root certificate holder Fina Root CA. The Fina Root CA, in turn, is trusted by the Microsoft Root Certificate Program, which governs which certificates are trusted by the Windows operating system. Microsoft Edge accounts for approximately 5 percent of the browsers actively used on the Internet.

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People in Internet security circles are sounding the alarm over the issuance of three TLS certificates for 1.1.1.1, a widely used DNS service from content delivery network Cloudflare and the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) Internet registry.

The certificates, issued in May, can be used to decrypt domain lookup queries encrypted through DNS over HTTPS, a protocol that provides end-to-end encryption when end-user devices seek the IP address of a particular domain they want to access. Some security experts are also concerned that the certificates may underpin other sensitive services, such as WARP, a VPN offered by Cloudflare. The certificates remained valid at the time this post went live on Ars.

Key failures

Although the certificates were issued four months ago, their existence came to public notice only on Wednesday in a post to an online discussion forum. They were issued by Fina RDC 2020, a certificate authority that’s subordinate to the root certificate holder Fina Root CA. The Fina Root CA, in turn, is trusted by the Microsoft Root Certificate Program, which governs which certificates are trusted by the Windows operating system. Microsoft Edge accounts for approximately 5 percent of the browsers actively used on the Internet.

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Florida is planning to end all vaccination requirements in the state, including requirements for school children to get routine childhood vaccinations that protect them and their communities from severe and life-threatening diseases, such as Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), pertussis (whooping cough), diphtheria, measles, tetanus, RSV, and polio.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo made the announcement at a press conference on Wednesday alongside Governor Ron DeSantis.

"What I'm most excited about is an announcement that we're making now, which is that the Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law—all of them, all of them, all of them, every last one of them," Ladapo said. "Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery."

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Florida is planning to end all vaccination requirements in the state, including requirements for school children to get routine childhood vaccinations that protect them and their communities from severe and life-threatening diseases, such as Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), pertussis (whooping cough), diphtheria, measles, tetanus, RSV, and polio.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo made the announcement at a press conference on Wednesday alongside Governor Ron DeSantis.

"What I'm most excited about is an announcement that we're making now, which is that the Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law—all of them, all of them, all of them, every last one of them," Ladapo said. "Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery."

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A Democrat who was fired from the Federal Trade Commission by President Trump was reinstated to her position yesterday in an appeals court ruling.

Trump's firing of Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter violated Supreme Court precedent, said yesterday's ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A District Court judge ruled the same way in July, but Slaughter couldn't get back to work because of an administrative stay that delayed the lower-court ruling from taking effect.

The administrative stay was dissolved in yesterday's appeals court ruling, in which a three-judge panel also ruled 2–1 to deny the US government's motion for a longer-term stay pending appeal. "The government has no likelihood of success on appeal given controlling and directly on point Supreme Court precedent," the panel majority said.

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