Four Random Things

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. I've heard of people opting for dumb phones and hunting for dumb television sets and cars with actual knobs for controls. And then there was that spamming refrigerator that made the news a while back.

But now, people are rightly getting upset about dishwashers that require an internet connection to do simple things:

You have to set up an account on Home Connect, set up the Home Connect app on your phone, and then you can control your dishwasher through the Internet to run a rinse cycle.

That doesn't make any sense to me.

An app? I mean, I can understand maybe adding some neat convenience features for those who want them. Like on my new fridge -- which I chose not to connect to WiFI -- it has an app that would allow me to monitor the inside temperature or look up service codes more easily. If I wanted those add-on features, which my old fridge didn't have, I could get them.

But requiring an app to access features that used to be controllable via buttons on the dishwasher itself -- or are still if you pay $400 more for the fancy "800" model? That's no bueno.

Sure, companies ought to be free to offer whatever kind of garbage they want on an open market, but I'll be damned if I'm going to reward ridiculous things like this with my business.

And no thanks: I don't want the prospect of things like having to pay a subscription to do something I used to be able to do by pressing a button -- or suddenly being unable to use an appliance if its vendor goes out of business.

This may or may not bother you, but I'm going be very careful and picky the next time I have to buy an appliance, even if no one in his right mind would think the internet is necessary for something like it to work.

2. An nice bonus to law and order is that, once in a while, you get to read a good dressing-down of a bad actor who chooses the wrong person to threaten with a lawsuit.

I encountered a good example of this recently in the form of a letter written in response to a company with a reputation for extorting settlement money by threatening infringement suits over its intellectual property:

I therefore think that it is important that, before closing, I make you aware of a few points.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues. My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle. In plaintiffs' practice, likewise, I was always a strong advocate of standing upon principle and taking cases all the way to judgment, even when substantial offers of settlement were on the table. I am "uncompromising" in the most literal sense of the word. If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds. As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not. [emphasis in quote from blog post]

Tort reform, including a "loser pays rule, would go a long way towards rectifying this situation, since many victims of this strategy can't afford to fight back.

3. There is a nonzero chance that the star Betelgeuse will go supernova in our lifetime. That sounds neat, but what will it be like when that happens?

It will be visible during the day. It will be brighter than any planet. It will be almost as bright as the full moon. You'll be able to read a book by the light of the Betelgeuse supernova at midnight.

But it will actually be painful to look at because unlike the full moon that is this gorgeous disc in the sky, Betelgeuse is still going to be a tiny pinprick of light. So it won't be comfortable to look at, and it will last a few months before fading away as all supernovae do. But as impressive as it is, it won't be dangerous.

Bright enough to read by at night? Good thing it won't last more than too long, then.

4. It was through spell-checking a blog post that I first learned that restaurateur has no n.

If that strikes you as odd, here's why:

A restaurateur in the Middle Ages was a medical assistant who would help ready patients for surgery. Soon these "restorers" became known for the special meat-based rich soup they would prepare to restore and fortify a person physically and spiritually. That restorative soup was called "restaurant." It wasn't until later that the place where those soups (and other healthy victuals) were served also became known as a restaurant. After the French Revolution of 1789, chefs who used to be in the service of aristocrats began opening public eating places serving all kinds of foods -- not just healthy soups. That's when the restaurant as we now know it by its current name and style began to take shape.

You'll have to go there for the main part of the answer, which is in the paragraph before the one quoted above.

I found my knowledge of Latin helpful in understanding this, although absent the knowledge of the origin of the terms, I never connected the grammatical dots on my own.

-- CAV