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[None]

If you're not that person, STFU maybe?

Rude. Reflect on why this applies precisely to you so you don't end up being an ass to people.

they have wireless heated plates now

and not, like, old school just-heat-up-something-that-holds-heat wireless

actual wireless electronics stuff going on

in a plate

to keep food warm while it's sitting on a table or something

That's.... Kind of boggling. Surely that's a massive waste of power if you're transmitting it wirelessly, even if only over a centimeter? Wireless charging always struck me as a fluke.

Is... Is the table built for wireless transmission, or is the element somewhere else? Why not just put heating elements in the table itself? Isn't this a fire hazard waiting to happen? I have so many questions.

[Mathel]

they have wireless heated plates now

and not, like, old school just-heat-up-something-that-holds-heat wireless

actual wireless electronics stuff going on

in a plate

to keep food warm while it's sitting on a table or something

That's.... Kind of boggling. Surely that's a massive waste of power if you're transmitting it wirelessly, even if only over a centimeter? Wireless charging always struck me as a fluke.

Is... Is the table built for wireless transmission, or is the element somewhere else? Why not just put heating elements in the table itself? Isn't this a fire hazard waiting to happen? I have so many questions.

Either the power comes from the table (At which point the cordless part is pointless), or it is battery powered.

Transmitting power across a room would be outrageously dangerous. It could be done with a MASER beam(microwave version of LASER), but any electronics that would come in contact with the beam, other than the reciever, would be fried, and flesh would be directly heated. Oh, and a sheet of metal would reflect the beam.

[bloop_bleep]

Wireless charging is about 80% efficient. But if you're not trying to charge a battery, but instead just heat something up, where do the energy losses go if not the heat in the food you're trying to keep warm? This sounds more like an induction heater than a wireless charger. The inefficiency could be the heat turning up in the table rather than the plate, but that's probably a pretty minor effect. Keeping stuff warm in open air is inherently inefficient.

To make it work you just need a wire coil in the table and a piece of metal in the plate.

[McTraveller]

I'm going to laugh when the next Carrington Event causes everyone's wireless plates to explode and/or catch their tables on fire.

[TamerVirus]

Does the plate have wi-fi?
Does it automatically order mayonnaise for you when it runs out?

[Rolan7]

No*

*Refer to page 14 of the EULA for more details

[McTraveller]

Wow, a jury awarded a single family punitive damages of $1.7 x 10⁹ due to a fatal rollover crash.  (They received a $24M compensatory damages award already.)

I'm of two minds here. I understand the concept of punitive damages but I cannot understand the rationale behind a 70x multiplier on compensatory damages.  Mostly from a "do you want to judge others by the same standard by which you judge them" perspective...Could you imagine having someone slip on your driveway and incur $100k in medical bills, but you knew about the fall hazard so a jury grants a $7M punitive award?

I can't get behind massive penalties like that, even for mega-corps.  Especially since at the end of the day, punishing a corporation doesn't really punish the people responsible or result in actual justice. I posit that it ends up harming the average worker in the company, not those responsible for the decisions that resulted in the thing being redressed.

[Dunamisdeos]

Were there any unusual circumstances?

[Lord Shonus]

I can't get behind massive penalties like that, even for mega-corps.  Especially since at the end of the day, punishing a corporation doesn't really punish the people responsible or result in actual justice. I posit that it ends up harming the average worker in the company, not those responsible for the decisions that resulted in the thing being redressed.

They do that to avoid the problem of "the average settlement of this is 2.4 million dollars, fixing it would cost us 2.5 billion, so we're just going to count on less than a thousand people suing over it". This is an actual thing that companies were caught doing in the past - severe safety defects in 1970s were left unaltered because it cost more to do so than to pay damages. The concept of punitive damages is to ensure that you can never, ever assume it is cheaper to just let people get hurt than to fix your products. That's why punitive damages are always scaled to the wealth of the party being sued.

And, in your example, if your driveway is unreasonably slippery (due to ice or poor condition, for example), and you're too lazy to fix it before it causes somebody serious injury, you damn well deserve to be hit with a hefty punitive damage.

[McTraveller]

It’s the literally ancient debate about “eye for an eye” versus arbitrary punitive damages.

I’d personally have a system with mandatory compensation (you wreck my car, you guve me a replacement of equal value) instead of maybe getting a replacement if you happen to win a suit.

Partly I think it’s because we lost the personal aspect and can offset our risk with insurance.  I’d expect people to be way more careful if they were on the hook for a larger part of risk than a relatively small insurance premium and deductible.

This also applies to giant corps, as they carry liability insurance.

[bloop_bleep]

The judge may reduce the punitive damages. Additionally, what is this 1.7 billion compared to the yearly profits of this corporation? If it is not some decent chunk it is not enough, especially considering there are likely others hurt by the same issue who didn't carry the suit to this point.

As Lord Shonus was saying -- paying compensation for causing deaths through severe negligence should NOT be just the cost of doing business.

[nenjin]

Bought my new car less than a year ago, and already, I have not one, not two, not three but FOUR GODDAMN DOOR DINGS on the passenger side.

One is so bad it's like series of crosshatch scratches, like someone hit the same spot multiple times frjom different angles.

WHY DO PEOPLE SUCK SO FUCKING BAD. I can appreciate a door ding or two A YEAR. Not FOUR IN NINE MONTHS.

I can't tell if it's the assholes in our parking lot at work, or assholes here at my apartment complex. I'm so fucking tired of both living and working in a shitty area full of low life dirt bags who don't respect other people's shit. I meticulously park every time to make sure I stay within the lines and leave plenty of room for people. Why for the love of god can people not exercise even a fraction of the conscientiousness I do?

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK. It's cosmetic so at the end of the day it doesn't actually affect my life. But I'm sitting here doing the math on what it would take to fix, and it's basically repainting the entire goddamn door for the low low price of more than $1k.

Whoever has been doing this shit to me, I hope the universe gives you what you deserve. Because if the reverse is true, and this is the universe giving me what I deserve then I hope it's at least equal in its sense of karmic justice.

[McTraveller]

Making penalties a fraction of profits is questionable since companies can do strange things to show "no profit."  Making it a fraction of revenue punishes the wrong people (usually).

Even more fun, now there's a $6B lawsuit in the UK against Sony because apparently the playstation's digital store commission of 30% is artificially causing prices to be too high and "hurting customers."  It's like people don't even know how pricing works - can you imagine if they find out what a typical retail markup is?  Oh wait, for some reason even if they know that, because "it's digital" they somehow think it's different.

For those of you that know my post history, you will know that I'm vehemently against rent seeking - but charging a commission that the market can (and is willing to) bear is not it.  Especially for luxury goods like video games - just don't buy them, and either prices will drop or you'll find something else to do.

[hector13]

That was my major problems with the lawsuit is that it’s bringing up the cost of living crisis now, while claiming the problem started 6 years ago, even though Sony has been selling games digitally for longer than that. As you say, they aren’t something you need to spend money on so if it’s too expensive… just don’t buy them.

Why they chose Sony to sue as opposed to Valve or Microsoft or Epic or Apple or Google is beyond me though. This is not a “problem” limited to Sony, all the major players do it.

[Great Order]

Wow, a jury awarded a single family punitive damages of $1.7 x 10⁹ due to a fatal rollover crash.  (They received a $24M compensatory damages award already.)

I'm of two minds here. I understand the concept of punitive damages but I cannot understand the rationale behind a 70x multiplier on compensatory damages.  Mostly from a "do you want to judge others by the same standard by which you judge them" perspective...Could you imagine having someone slip on your driveway and incur $100k in medical bills, but you knew about the fall hazard so a jury grants a $7M punitive award?

I can't get behind massive penalties like that, even for mega-corps.  Especially since at the end of the day, punishing a corporation doesn't really punish the people responsible or result in actual justice. I posit that it ends up harming the average worker in the company, not those responsible for the decisions that resulted in the thing being redressed.

From my understanding this usually comes about as punishment after repeated issues without fixes. Like the McDonalds coffee thing, they'd repeatedly been told they needed to reduce the coffee's temperature, and when they repeatedly didn't, the courts massively increased the damages payout to motivate them into doing it.