Fortnite is over seven years old, but that doesn’t mean it’s passé. The game is still played by over a million people daily, with roughly 650 million registered players in total. Many of those players might log on with zero animosity towards the game or its maker, Epic Games. But others have been wronged by the company, at least according to the FTC. And, to remedy that, payouts in a legal settlement are now on the way. 

What did Epic Games do?

It’s been two years since the FTC ordered Epic Games to pay over $245 million in fines, including $72 million in direct refunds to players. In case you missed it, back in 2022 the FTC accused the company of “counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration,” tricking users into buying things they didn’t mean to, all because they clicked the wrong option.

These accidental charges really were accidental. The FTC said that players would be charged while a game was loading when returning up from sleep mode, or when simply previewing an item without actually meaning to buy it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of these unwanted purchases came from children who were playing the game. Parents would likely only notice how many charges their children actually were tricked into making when they checked their credit card statements.

The FTC says you are eligible for a refund if any of the following apply to you:

• You were charged in-game currency for items you didn’t want between January 2017 and September 2022

• Your child made charges to your credit card without your knowledge between January 2017 and November 2018

• Your account was locked between January 2017 and September 2022 after you complained to your credit card company about wrongful charges

When are payments rolling out?

Payouts are being sent out to claimants now—at least, for the first round of them. Exactly 629,344 payments were sent out on Monday, 50% through PayPal, with the other half arriving via checks. If you applied for a claim, you would have specified at that time which of these two forms of payment you’d like to receive, and you may have been included in this first round.

While payments vary, the average sum is $114. If you receive the money via PayPa, you have to claim it within 30 days. If you receive a check, you have 90 days to cash it.

Can I still apply for a refund?

If you weren’t a part of this first round, don’t worry: There will be future rounds of payments. The FTC says it is still investigating claims filed after Oct. 8, so your claim may still need to be processed.

In addition, there’s still time to apply for a refund if you haven’t yet. Head to the FTC’s official site and apply with your claim number or your Epic Account ID before the Jan. 10, 2025 deadline.

There are more sorts of vending machines than ever before—and they dispense a wider range of products than you might imagine. While no country can compete with Japan in terms of sheer vending machine mania, even here in the U.S., vending machines have become much more varied. If you think vending machines only sell drinks, candy bars, and chips, it’s time to read about these 11 items you can find in vending machines.

Bullets

Of course you can purchase ammunition from a vending machine in this country (well—in Texas, Alabama, and Oklahoma). The fact that we can’t yet tap a credit card and get a 3D-printed gun from a kiosk is surprising. These vending machines are pretty high-tech, using facial recognition and mysterious AI magic to ensure that the people buying the bullets aren’t sketchy, and advocates argue that they’re actually more secure than traditional ammo outlets.

Shoes

A broken heel, flopping sole, or burst shoe seam can ruin your day. Thank goodness someone thought to put shoes into a vending machine. Seen in Las Vegas, Nevada, these machines charge $20 for a pair of ballet flats that can be rolled up for easy storage. Shoe emergencies do happen, after all, and this seems like a pretty cheap and practical solution.

Pizza and burgers

Americans love their fast food, and vending machines have been feeding the desperate and exhausted for decades. While pizza vending machines seem comprehensible—one can imagine they’re just microwaved pizzas with extra steps—a hamburger vending machine seems kind of sketchy. Sure, a robot can probably flip a burger pretty effectively, but the whole “storing ground beef in a vending machine” seems like a one-way ticket to food poisoning.

Making charitable donations

Vending machines aren’t always about corporate America selling things to us. Light the World Giving Machines are reverse-vending machines that allow you to make charitable donations to a range of organizations. The machines are operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but donations can benefit many different organizations, including the Red Cross, UNICEF, and the World Food Program.

Champagne

You’re making your way through the world and suddenly have a craving for Champagne, as one does. If you lack the resources to have some flown out to you, you might be in luck if you’re near a vending machine dispensing mini bottles of Moët & Chandon Champagne. You can actually find these in the wild, so the next time you’re in the mood for a fancy drink, see if you can track one down.

Pecan pie

If you’ve ever been to Texas, you know that pecans are a big deal there, and as a result so are pecan pies. And why not! They’re delicious. And also now incredibly available, because pecan pie vending machines are a thing that exists. Granted, there appears to be exactly one in existence right now, but that’s still more pecan pie vending machines than we would have assumed.

Salads

As with any fresh food option, salads seem antithetical to the whole “vending machine” vibe. And yet capitalism will try to make anything work, so salad vending machines do, in fact, exist. These are refrigerated vending machines, of course, and they are usually restocked several times a week to guarantee freshness, although that brings up the question of how much wasted salad are we talking about here?

LEGO

Yes, your favorite childhood toy, adult obsession, and foot-murdering weapon can be purchased from a vending machine. Seemingly found mainly at airports, for some reason, these machines dispense a variety of sets for last-minute gifting or to occupy you on your 19-hour flight to Singapore.

Stories

If you’re about to hop on a long trip somewhere and have absolutely nothing to keep yourself busy, you might find a short story vending machine at the airport—and they might even be free. And at least one small bookstore is playing with the idea of selling books via vending machine, which seems like a low-cost way to extend their sales and hours of operation.

Cheese

You know how it is: You’re out there living your best life when a serious craving for some brie comes over you. Well, thank goodness you live in the future, because cheese vending machines are out there. They often also offer charcuterie options as well for the total cheese experience. All that’s missing is a wine vending machine next door so you can have a fancy feast right there on the sidewalk.

We’re approaching that time of year when we’re all looking forward to a clean slate, a new year, and an opportunity to finally get our act together via some serious, can’t-fail New Year’s Resolutions. For a lot of us, that means a suite of resolutions about money designed to set our financial ship right. And while the most obvious financial resolutions—such as make a budget, save more, pay down debt— are all good ideas, there are also a slew of less obvious financial resolutions you might not have considered trying.

These overlooked financial resolutions aren’t the first things you’ll think of, but each one can have a real, measurable impact on your financial health in a variety of ways. So when you’re revising the latest version of your financial resolutions this year, consider adding some of these to your list for maximum impact.

Maintaining your property

If you own a property and you don’t have a comprehensive maintenance plan, you’re setting yourself up for financial struggles in the form of large future expenses. Deferred home maintenance has a measurable cost, and dealing with maintenance and repair issues incrementally is a lot more manageable than dealing with annual emergencies like a roof replacement or replacing rotten siding, both of which have price tags in the tens of thousands of dollars. Resolving to maintain your property properly will have a positive effect on your finances.

Audit your subscriptions

It’s so easy to sign up for services and then just forget all about them—and those zombie subscriptions can cost you a lot of money over time. So make a resolution to audit those subscriptions and be thoughtful about which ones are useful and which ones could be canceled. There are tools that can help you review those expenditures, but the key is to make the resolution in the first place. This resolution could also help other financial resolutions because it frees up money that could go to building an emergency fund, lowering your debt, or increasing your savings.

Reviewing insurance coverage

A lot of us buy insurance when we have to and then forget about it, paying the premiums and not thinking about it until we need to make a claim. But you should resolve to review all of your insurance coverage this year—check to see if you could be paying lower premiums (either by switching insurers or correcting information on your CLUE report), and that you have the correct amount of coverage for every aspect of your life (consulting with an insurance professional can help if you’re not sure how to figure out proper coverage levels). You should also check that your beneficiaries don’t need to be updated, and that you’re not paying for riders or additional insurance you no longer need.

Grapple with inflation

These days, we’re all painfully aware of inflation and its impact on our lives. And yet we tend to regard it as a force beyond our control. This year, resolve to take inflation into consideration—increase your savings and earnings goals by an inflation-adjusted amount. Keeping track of the inflation rate gives you a clue as to how much more expensive stuff will be (or how much less your money will buy) so you can prioritize needs versus wants. This is crucial information that you can incorporate into your decision-making instead of being blindsided when your grocery budget suddenly seems to explode.

Understand the value of your time

Here’s a resolution for you: Value your time. Literally. When you go to work, you’re selling your time, not just your skills or experience. Your skills or experience add value to your time, but time is what you’re ultimately selling. That means your time has an hourly rate attached to it whether you realize it or not. Take a moment to figure out what that rate is (if you’re not paid by the hour, start with your annual salary and divide by 2,080 to get a very rough idea).

Now you can think about every single thing you do in terms of the cost of your time relative to the rest of your life. If you normally get paid $25 an hour to do work, that number will help you figure out whether you‘re using your time wisely, or if someone is taking advantage of you. Feel free to give yourself a raise if you’re pretty sure you’re underpaid at your job—but also resolve to get a new job if that’s the case.

Clean up old assets

This year, resolve to do a thorough check for assets you might have forgotten. Doing a check for unclaimed property doesn’t take long, and might remind you of an old account that you’ve forgotten. And if you have a bunch of old 401(k) accounts left behind at old jobs, this is the year to resolve to get that mess cleaned up.

Even if the amounts in those accounts are small, it’s worth it to claim them and roll them over for a number of reasons: Combined, the money might be more than you realize, and leaving those accounts under the control of an employer you’re no longer with isn’t a recipe for financial success. Plus, you’re leaving money on the table. In a time when 28% of the country has zero saved for retirement, you might need every penny of that money.

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In December, Max’s dropping an eclectic mix of flicks. There’s a lot of quality on offer, like Juror #2, a courtroom drama from Clint Eastwood with a heavy-hitting cast, including Nicholas Hoult, Tony Collette, and J.K Simmons. There’s also James Gunn’s animated series Creature Commandos, set in a newly rebooted DC Comics universe. But if you really want the best movies on Max this month, pick at random from Humphrey Bogart collection.

You might notice a distinct lack of Joker: Folie à Deux, the much maligned sequel that flopped in theaters earlier this fall and is hitting Max on Dec. 13. It probably doesn’t belong on any “best” list, but your tastes may vary.

Juror #2

Directed by 94-year-old icon Clint Eastwood and starring Tony Collette, J.K Simmons, Chris Messina, Kiefer Sutherland, and Nicholas Hoult, Juror #2 is a legal drama exploring justice and personal responsibility. Hoult plays Justin Kemp an everyman serving on the jury of high-profile murder case. When Kemp realizes he might have personal knowledge of the crime, he must decide whether he’ll try to sway the rest of the jury. This movie is getting extremely good reviews from critics.

Starts streaming December 20.

Creature Commandos

This stylish animated-series for adults is based on the DC Comics anti-hero team and was created by James Gunn, whose excellent Peacemaker also aired on HBO. The Creature Commandos of the title are a group of super-powered monsters assembled to take out the most dangerous enemies of mankind by whatever method they choose. They tend to choose extreme violence. More than just a series, Creature Commandos serves as a soft introduction to the James Gunn reboot of the DC Comics universe we’ll be seeing in Superman: Legacy in summer 2025.

Starts streaming December 5.

Humphrey Bogart film festival

Attention should be paid to the classic movies Max streams every month. For December, they are digging deep into the cinema vault for some of Humphrey Bogart’s best work—everything from 1939’s hardboiled gangsters-and-guns flick King of the Underworld, to 1937 horror movie The Return of Doctor X, to 1940’s It All Came True, a musical in which Bogie shares the screen with Ann Sheridan. If you haven’t watched any Bogart movies and you’re overwhelmed by the 14(!) options available on Max, start with classic Sam Spade noir-detective movie The Maltese Falcon, which deserves its reputation as one of the best films ever made.

• Marked Woman (1937)

• San Quentin (1937)

• Kid Galahad (1937)

• Invisible Stripes (1939)

• King of the Underworld (1939)

• The Return of Doctor X (1939)

• The Roaring Twenties (1939)

• You Can’t Get Away with Murder (1939)

• It All Came True (1940)

• They Drive by Night (1940)

• The Maltese Falcon (1941)

• Passage to Marseille (1944)

• The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947)

• Key Largo (1949)

Starts streaming December 1.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

Through interviews with family and friends, this documentary tells the story of the rise of the actor the world would come to know as Superman, the near-fatal accident that left him paralyzed, and his activism in its aftermath. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story isn’t a hagiography; Reeves was a complex man, and this movie isn’t afraid to delve into his frustration over being typecast as Superman and battles with his own demons.

Starts streaming December 7.

Hard Knocks: In Season with the AFC North

With the playoffs right in front of us and the Super Bowl approaching, this HBO documentary series takes viewers inside the locker rooms and coaching offices of the Ravens, Steelers, Bengals, and Browns as they battle for the top spot in the AFC North division. Even if you aren’t a huge football fan, the personal stories of players like Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Myles Garrett, and TJ Watt are fascinating, as is the all-access window on what it takes to make it as an elite team.

Starts streaming December 3.

Nature of the Crime

In Nature of the Crime, we follow three incarcerated men as they get ready for parole hearings after decades in prison. These men were convicted in their teens and now middle aged, and now they face a board of citizens who must weigh the protection of society against the rehabilitation of longtime convicts.

Starts streaming December 10.

Last month’s picks

Dune: Prophecy, Season 1

We all need more Dune in our lives. This series, based on Frank Herbert’s Sisterhood of Dune, takes place 10,000 years before the ascension of Paul Atreides. It details the formation of the Bene Gesserit and the Harkonnen sisters’ fight against the enemies of humanity. Dune: Prophecy stars Emily Watson, Olivia Williams, Travis Fimmel, Jodhi May, and many more. Epic!

Starts streaming Nov. 17.

Like Water for Chocolate, Season 1

In this adaptation of Laura Esquivel’s magical realism novel, Irene Azuela and Azul Guaita play Tita de la Garza and Pedro Múzquiz, lovers who are kept apart by their families’ customs. Tita uses cooking to fight her oppression, creating recipes so powerful they act as spells on the people who taste them. If you’re a sensualist, you’ll want to clear time to watch Like Water for Chocolate .

Starts streaming Nov. 3.

Janet Planet (2023)

A24 has cracked the code for making emotional movies for smart people; movies like Janet Planet, in which precocious 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) spends the summer of 1991 splitting time between living in her rich internal world and quietly worshipping her otherworldly mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson). Writer/director Annie Baker’s carefully crafted film explores the subtly and intensity of a mother-daughter relationship with rare grace.

Starts streaming Nov. 1.

The Sex Lives of College Girls, Season 3

Mindy Kaling’s show about the amorous adventures of the students of New England’s prestigious Essex College is entering its third season, and this time, it’s sexual; wait, it’s always sexual. Sex Lives of College Girls‘ regulars Pauline Chalamet, Amrit Kaur, Alyah Chanelle Scott, Christopher Meyer, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, Renika Williams, Gracie Lawrence, and Mia Rodgers are all returning.

Starts streaming Nov. 22.

Get Millie Black

Get Millie Black’s title character is an ex-Scotland Yard detective who returns to her childhood home in Kingston, Jamaica to work missing person cases. Played by Tamara Lawrance, Black’s mission to find lost souls is complicated when Scotland Yard detective Luke Holborn (Joe Dempsie) shows up in Kingston on an investigation of his own.

Starts streaming Nov. 25.

Sweethearts

In romantic comedy Sweethearts, Kiernan Shipka and Nico Hiraga play best friends who return to their hometown from college for Thanksgiving break. (Hey! It’s premiering on that weekend in real life!) They’re both still tied to their respective high school sweethearts and make a pact to end the relationships. Will love blossom between these just-friends before the weekend is over? I would bet on “yes” but no one will take my action.

Starts streaming Nov. 28.

Various Yule Logs

I like when streaming companies do unexpected things with their platforms. This month, Max is streaming a trio of different themed yule logs: Studio Ghibli’s Calcifer Yule Log, A Very Merry Rickmas Yule Log, and Harry Potter: Fireplace. It’s just logs burning, but they’re branded logs burning.

Starts streaming Nov. 14.

Human vs. Hamster

Like the title says, this show pits humans against hamsters in scaled games of strength, smarts, and agility, to answer the age old question of whether we’re better than rodents. Remember after the pandemic? When streaming services and networks were so absent of content that really bizarre shows would appear? Human vs. Hamster reminds me of that, and I mean that in a good way.

Starts streaming Nov. 21

Music Box: Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary

Put on your Sperry Topsiders and tie that sweater around your waist; it’s time for some yacht rock. This “dockumentary” (get it?) chronicles the rise of California soft rock brought to you by the likes of Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, and Toto.

Starts streaming Nov. 30.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2024 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced a $1.13 billion investment to support local and regional food systems, building upon the Department’s previous investments in the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement (LFPA) and Local Food for Schools (LFS) programs.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2024 – U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that USDA is investing $6.3 billion in rural and Tribal communities across 44 states to expand access to a clean and reliable electric grid, provide safe drinking water and create good-paying jobs.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2024 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement (OPPE) is accepting applications for the 2025 USDA E. Kika De La Garza Fellowship Program. These fellowships introduce faculty and staff from Hispanic-Serving Institutions and Hispanic-Serving School Districts to the vast array of USDA resources available to them. The fellowships take place during the summer of 2025, and applications are due by March 6, 2025.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2024 — The Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is now available on DietaryGuidelines.gov. The report contains the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s (Committee) independent, evidence-based findings and advice to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9, 2024 – U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced ways that the Biden-Harris Administration is delivering on Tribal requests to empower Tribal Nations, citizens, and organizations. Secretary Vilsack made the announcements at the 2024 White House Tribal Nations Summit, the foremost government-to-government gathering between the U.S. Government and the 574 federally recognized Tribal Nations.