California Attorney General Rob Bonta has sent a cease and desist letter to xAI, days after his office launched an official investigation into the company over reports that Grok was generating nonconsensual

If you’ll recall, xAI and Grok have been under fire for taking images of real individuals and putting them in revealing clothing like bikinis upon random users’ requests.

Bonta’s office demands that xAI immediately cease and desist from creating “digitized sexually explicit material” when the depicted individual didn’t consent to it or if the individual is a minor. It also demanded that xAI stop “facilitating or aiding and abetting the creation… or publication of digitized sexually explicit material” of nonconsenting individuals and persons under 18 years of age.

X changed its policies after the issue broke out and prevented the Grok account from being able to edit images of real people into revealing clothing. xAI also moved Grok’s image-generating features behind a paywall and geoblocked paying users’ ability to edit images of real people into bikinis, but only in regions where it’s illegal.

In his announcement, Bonta said xAI developed a “spicy mode” for Grok to generate explicit content and used it as a marketing point. The California AG also said that Grok-generated sexual images are being used to harass both public figures and ordinary users. “Most alarmingly, news reports have described the use of Grok to alter images of children to depict them in minimal clothing and sexual situations,” Bonta’s announcement reads.

“The actions above violate California law, including California Civil Code section 1708.86, California Penal Code sections 311 et seq. and 647(j)(4), and California Business & Professions Code section 17200,” it said. The state’s Department of Justice now expects to hear from xAI on the steps it’s taking to address these issues within the next five days.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/california-ag-sends-cease-and-desist-to-xai-over-groks-explicit-deepfakes-140000574.html?src=rss

I came out of my CyberGhost review with a positive opinion, feeling it had earned its spot in my best VPN roundup. However, even an expert review is subjective, and there’s a chance CyberGhost will not work for you. If that’s the case, here’s how to cancel your subscription.

How to stop your CyberGhost subscription renewing

Cancelling your CyberGhost subscription won’t end it right away, unless you delete your account or get the refund (I’ll explain how to do both of those later). Instead, the way to cancel CyberGhost is to stop your subscription from renewing at the end of each billing period. Once you’ve done that, you can keep using CyberGhost until your current period ends.

The following steps will cancel auto-renewal if you got CyberGhost through its website. If you bought it through an app store instead, see the next section.

1. Open your browser and go to cyberghostvpn.com.

2. At the top-right of the screen, click the box labeled My Account. Enter your username and password if you aren’t logged in already.

3. Look at the top-right corner of the new screen and click the CyberGhost logo next to your email address. From the drop-down menu, select Subscriptions.

4. Find the subscription you want to cancel and select Cancel Subscription.

5. When prompted, click Continue to Cancel.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

This will turn off automatic billing for your account. The next time you would have been billed, your subscription will expire. You can resubscribe by purchasing another term. If you’re within the refund period — 14 days for a monthly subscription and 45 days for all others — you can now request your money back.

How to cancel CyberGhost if you subscribed through an app store

When you subscribe to an app through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, the store handles the billing; the app provider doesn’t process the money itself. If you bought CyberGhost through an app store and want to cancel, you’ll have to ask the app store in question, not CyberGhost. Here’s how to do it.

If you subscribed through the Apple App Store, you’ll need to cancel through your Apple ID. Here are the steps.

1. Open the Settings app on your home screen.

2. At the top of the Settings menu, you’ll see your name. Tap it.

3. In your Apple Account menu, tap Subscriptions.

4. Scroll until you find your CyberGhost subscription, then tap on it.

5. Tap the words Cancel Subscription, then follow the prompts.

Here’s what to do if you subscribed through the Google Play store. Similar to the Apple process, you’ll go through the list of subscriptions on your profile.

1. Open the Google Play Store app.

2. Tap the circle in the top-right corner with the first letter of your name.

3. Find the Payments & Subscriptions menu and tap on it. On the next menu that appears, tap Subscriptions.

4. Scroll down until you find your CyberGhost subscription. Tap on it, then click Cancel Subscription.

5. Follow the prompts to complete cancellation.

How to delete your CyberGhost account

Before you set out to delete your CyberGhost account altogether, make sure you’ve cancelled auto-renew first by following the steps in the previous section. If you don’t, you might still be charged for the subscription you’re not using, and it’s a huge hassle to end that without an account.

Once you’ve done that, log into your account on cyberghostvpn.com and click on your account profile at the top-right, just like when you canceled auto-renewal. Below the username/password window and the message about an activation key, you’ll see the words Delete My Account in tiny letters.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

Click on them. On the page that appears, select Delete My Account again. Follow any more prompts you’re given to annihilate your username for good (note that you can’t use it again afterwards).

How to get a refund from CyberGhost

To get a refund on your CyberGhost subscription, you have to be inside the window for the plan you chose. With a monthly plan, the refund period is 14 days. For all other plans, it’s 45 days. If this time has elapsed, there’s unfortunately no way to get your money back.

If you are within the refund period, you can get your money by sending a request through customer support. You can email support@cyberghost.ro, submit a ticket through this link or open a live chat conversation by clicking the Live Chat button at the bottom-right of any page on cyberghostvpn.com. No matter what method you choose, the conversation will go faster if you have your order number on-hand — check your inbox if you don’t know it.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

If you went through an app store, you’ll need to request your money back from that platform instead. Apple and Google Play handle their own monetary transactions, which means they also process refunds.

Best CyberGhost alternatives

After you’ve cancelled and/or deleted CyberGhost out of your life, you still need a VPN; the benefits of masking your IP address and changing your virtual location don’t go anywhere. You can check out my best list (linked at the top) or best free VPN roundup for ideas, or check out the review for my favorite service, Proton VPN.

Proton VPN is my top choice because of its focus on user freedoms and attention to quality in everything it does. If you’re willing to pay a bit more for extreme simplicity and total reliability, ExpressVPN is ideal for beginners. If you’re a speed demon and just want to keep your downloads fast, go with Surfshark.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/how-to-cancel-cyberghost-and-get-a-refund-130000311.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Nearly five million social media accounts belonging to Australian teenagers have been deactivated or removed, a month after a landmark law barring those younger than 16 from using the services took effect, the government said on Thursday. The announcement was the first reported metric reflecting the rollout of the law, which is being closely watched by several other countries weighing whether the regulation can be a blueprint for protecting children from the harms of social media, or a cautionary tale highlighting the challenges of such attempts.

The law required 10 social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Reddit, to prevent users under 16 from accessing their services. Under the law, which came into force in December, failure by the companies to take “reasonable steps” to remove underage users could lead to fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars, about $33 million. […] The number of removed accounts offered only a limited picture of the ban’s impact. Many teenagers have said in the weeks since the law took effect that they were able to get around the ban by lying about their age, or that they could easily bypass verification systems.

The regulator tasked with enforcing and tracking the law, the eSafety Commissioner, did not release a detailed breakdown beyond announcing that the companies had “removed access” to about 4.7 million accounts belonging to children under 16. Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, said this week that it had removed almost 550,000 accounts of users younger than 16 before the ban came into effect. “Change doesn’t happen overnight,” said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “But these early signs show it’s important we’ve acted to make this change.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Welcome to our latest roundup of what’s going on in the indie game space. Several neat-looking games arrived this week, we got release dates for several others that I’m really looking forward to and a brand-new Steam festival was announced. 

The Love, Romance, and Heartbreak Debutante Ball is said to be the first Valentine’s Day-themed Steam festival. It’ll run from February 13 to 20 and feature more than 100 games, including discounts and demos. A showcase will take place on February 13 at 1PM ET on the Sunny Demeanor Games YouTube channel too.

Organizers say the festival includes a wide variety of games about love, including RPGs, puzzle games and (naturally) visual novels. You might play as a cat or someone trying to fish an engagement ring out of a claw machine, as a secret agent or a couple that’s run off to another planet. I’m intrigued! There will be some NSFW games involved, for what it’s worth.

New releases

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check seems like a 3D version of Papers Please but with zombies. At a checkpoint amid a zombie outbreak, your mission is to screen survivors for signs of infection. If you’re unsure of their status, you can send an individual to quarantine for further observation or a lab for additional screening. Otherwise, you can let them in or send them to “liquidation.” Get things wrong and it could spell disaster, but at least you have a sidearm (and a weaponized drone) to help you deal with sticky situations.

It looks like there’s a lot going on in Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, which is from Brigada Games and publisher Devolver Digital. There are base and resource management aspects as well. It’s out now on Steam (usually $20, but there’s a 10 percent discount until January 26) and PC Game Pass.

Air Hares seems to draw inspiration from classic top-down shoot-’em-ups. But instead of simply blowing up countless ships, your mission is to restore farmland. You’ll fire seeds and water to turn barren land into fertile carrot fields. There are still enemies to contend with — you (and perhaps a co-op partner) can dodge and ram them as you try to protect the land. Expect boss battles, too.

I really like the aesthetic here. It has a ’90s-style cartoon look (I suddenly really want a modern Bucky O’Hare game). Also, the song from the trailer is going to live in my head for weeks.

Husband-and-wife team Tim and Megan Bungeroth created Air Hares over six years with the help of several contributors. According to a press release, the game is “inspired by the creators’ personal journey with infertility and the idea of creating life rather than destroying it.” 

Air Hares is out now on Steam. It typically costs $9, but there’s a 20 percent discount until January 28.

Luckshot Games’ Big Hops looks like my kind of 3D platformer: joyous and playful. As a young frog who has been kidnapped, you’ll try to find airship parts for a raccoon who has promised to help get you home.

There are tons of movement mechanics here, and Hop’s tongue plays a major role in those. You can use it to swing across gaps, hookshot your way to higher platforms and solve puzzles. 

Big Hops is out now on Steam, Nintendo Switch and PS5 for $20. The Switch and Steam versions have a 10 percent launch discount until January 19.

Cassette Boy is a pixel-art game that might appear to be a 2D exploration puzzler, but there’s more going on here. You can rotate the world to discover new secrets and hide enemies and hazards from view so you can move past them. If you can’t see something on your screen, it doesn’t exist. There’s a bit of a Fez influence here, it would appear.

Wonderland Kazakiri and publisher Pocketpair are behind this one, which I’m looking forward to checking out when I have a chance. Cassette Boy is available on Steam, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S for $13.

Upcoming 

I really enjoyed the demo for Aerial_Knight’s DropShot (as well as Aerial_Knight’s previous games). I’m for sure going to be playing the full game when it hits PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam and Epic Games Store on February 17.

This is a single-player first-person shooter in which you’re skydiving with finger guns. You compete with four enemies to grab the only available parachute as you’re falling through the air. Rounds are fast-paced too, generally lasting under a minute.

Point-and-click adventure Earth Must Die has been on my radar for a while and we’ll all get a chance to try it soon. It’s designed to be a playable cartoon (with a runtime of about eight hours) and it has an art style to match. 

The cast is pretty stellar, with Ben Starr (Final Fantasy XVI, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hades II), Joel Fry (Our Flag Means Death) and a whole load of British comedy figures on board. There’s a demo available on Steam now and the full game — from Size Five Games and publisher No More Robots — will land on January 27.

Let’s wrap things up for this week something very silly-looking from Monster Shop Games. Pie in the Sky is a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater-inspired action arcade game in which you play as a magpie that terrorizes bystanders. You can knock people off the Sydney Harbour Bridge, ram kids off of scooters, actually go skateboarding and, uh, cause havoc from above. In classic THPS-style, there are hidden areas too. 

This looks like a fun distraction from [gestures at everything]. Pie is the Sky will swoop onto Steam on February 2.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/papers-please-but-with-zombies-a-farming-based-shoot-em-up-and-other-new-indie-games-worth-checking-out-123000437.html?src=rss

Tencia Benavidez, a Supernatural user who lives in New Mexico, started her VR workouts during the Covid pandemic. She has been a regular user in the five years since, calling the ability to work out in VR ideal, given that she lives in a rural area where it’s hard to get to a gym or work out outside during a brutal winter. She stuck with Supernatural because of the community and the eagerness of Supernatural’s coaches.

“They seem like really authentic individuals that were not talking down to you,” Benavidez says. “There’s just something really special about those coaches.”

Meta bought Supernatural in 2022, folding it into its then-heavily-invested-in metaverse efforts. The purchase was not a smooth process, as it triggered a lengthy legal battle in which the US Federal Trade Commission tried to block Meta from purchasing the service due to antitrust concerns about Meta “trying to buy its way to the top” of the VR market. Meta ultimately prevailed. At the time, some Supernatural users were cautiously optimistic, hoping that big bag of Zuckerbucks could keep its workout juggernaut afloat.

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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Monsanto’s argument that federal pesticide law should shield it and parent company Bayer from tens of thousands of state lawsuits over Roundup since the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a cancer warning label. The case could determine whether federal rules preempt state failure-to-warn claims without deciding whether glyphosate causes cancer. The Los Angeles Times reports: Some studies have found it is a likely carcinogen, and others concluded it does not pose a true cancer risk for humans. However, the court may free Monsanto and Bayer, its parent company, from legal claims from more than 100,000 plaintiffs who sued over their cancer diagnosis. The legal dispute involves whether the federal regulatory laws shield the company from being sued under state law for failing to warn consumers.

[…] “EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, does not cause cancer. EPA has consistently reached that conclusion after studying the extensive body of science on glyphosate for over five decades,” the company told the court in its appeal. They said the EPA not only refused to add a cancer warning label to products with Roundup, but said it would be “misbranded” with such a warning.

Nonetheless, the “premise of this lawsuit, and the thousands like it, is that Missouri law requires Monsanto to include the precise warning that EPA rejects,” they said. On Friday, the court said in a brief order that it would decide “whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a label-based failure-to-warn claim where EPA has not required the warning.” The court is likely to hear arguments in the case of Monsanto vs. Durnell in April and issue a ruling by late June.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge has temporarily lifted the Trump administration’s suspension of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, allowing construction on the largest offshore wind project in the U.S. to resume. CNBC reports: Judge Jamar Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted Dominion’s request for a preliminary injunction Friday. Dominion called the Trump suspension “arbitrary and illegal” in its lawsuit. “Our team will now focus on safely restarting work to ensure CVOW begins delivery of critical energy in just weeks,” a Dominion spokesperson told CNBC in a statement Friday. “While our legal challenge proceeds, we will continue seeking a durable resolution of this matter through cooperation with the federal government,” the spokesperson said.

Dominion said in December that “stopping CVOW for any length of time will threaten grid reliability for some of the nation’s most important war fighting, AI and civilian assets.” Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind is a 176-turbine project that would provide enough power for more than 600,000 homes, according to Dominion. It is scheduled to start dispatching power by the end of the first quarter of 2026. In December, the Trump administration paused the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the U.S., blaming the decisions on a classified report from the Department of Defense.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.