At that blandest of Americana places: Sears.
(emphasis mine)
Let’s just drive a wooden stake through the English language and be done with it.
Wouldn’t it be H347?
Agreed on the OP.
l33tsp33k r no r0x0r. It r sux0r. All your Sears are belong to us. We’re all doomed.
I’m confused. Putting that into Google shows it aint just Sears using it. Maybe it’s just a nonsensical brand name that we should all get used to, or probably never think about again? Did an annoying brand name handicap eBay?
Ok, maybe this is a good thread to ask this question: there is an online comic I discovered recently (but now read regularly) called Ctrl+Alt+Del, and its tagline is “Tragically l337.” What is l337? Is it a play on “l33t” and the old slang of “L7?”
Please tell me you’re all joking; you guys aren’t such geeks that you see leet speak in every word/letter combination. What do you think the Kenmore Elite 3.8 cu. ft. IEC HE3 King Size Capacity actually means??
I’ve looked the item up, and all I can say is…
you want to pay $1.3k to clean chunks of fabric?!?!?!?
OK, that over with…I’m sure ‘HE’ stands for “xyz efficiency”. “4t” is probably related to that.
Well, most of your appliances are made by about two companies, who then slap other brand names on them. So that’s most likely a model designation, and is used to denote a “feature” of the damned things.
Hm. I didn’t realize that there was a name for this.
Here’s something that may help you communicate with the 13375 but note that techology is not available to reverse the communication…
HERA IS A LINK 2 DA WIKIEPDIA ARTICL3 DESCRIBNG LETSP3AK FOR THOSE OF U WHO W3RA AS CLUALAS AS I WAS1111 WTF LOL Y DO MERICAN KIDS SUK SO MUCH AT MATH WH3N THEY D3COD3 SHIT LIEK THIS ON TEH FLY DURNG R3ALTIEM CHATROM DISCUSIONS??? OMG WTF LOL
Hm. Don’t read that first link. It spits out crap like that third paragraph. I thought it would be funny.
It’s really fairly simple to explain, but can be a real chore to read.
l33t or l337 or l33+ is “leet”, a shortening of “elite”. It came from some techie nerd types I guess.
l33tn355 would be “leetness” and so on.
You just substitute a letter with any number that sort of looks similar.
Chairman Pow - I was actually able to read that “leet” paragraph.
“Here is a link to the Wikipedia article describing leetspeak for those of you who were as clueless as I was!!! What the %%#, laughing out loud. Why do American kids suck so much at math when they decode shit like this on the fly during realtime chatroom discussions? Oh my God, what the #%, laughing out loud.”
Now I really am worried. ROFLMAO (rolling on the floor, laughing my ass off) :eek:
That was 1337-lite. If you can’t read that paragraph, there’s something wrong with you. Real l33t doesn’t use any letters to represent themselves.
7|-|15 15 4 83++3® 4þþ®0><1//\4+10// 0|= 1337
I suppose I should have mentioned that “l33t” itself is 31337-|_1+3.
Now that’s impressive! You are the master.
“AL UR BAES R BLONG 2 US1!!1!!1! OMG WTF LOL”
Psh, that’s not 1337, that’s netspeak, which is usually stupid kiddies who can’t spell well and end up making dumb phrases that are tough to read.
“4LL j0oR B453 r b3L0||G 2 |_|5!!1”
This is 13375P34K, which is the truly fine art of smart(er) people intentionally misspelling stuff to make it tough to read. 
Now if you’re truly 1337, you can speak it outloud…ph33r.
“This is a better approximation of leet”
I think I gave myself eye strain decoding that.
To be sure, I was expecting more from a crappy free internet translater. But I got it from someone with apparently way too much time in his hands…
So, this is like the computer version of Pig Latin, right?
Oh, I get the whole leetspeak thing, and I’ve always known what “l33t” was, I just didn’t know that it was the same as “l337.” I didn’t realize that the 7 and the t were the same thing.
The comic that I mentioned wouldn’t be above making fun of itself, and I was wondering if “l337” was some kind of play on the '60s slang of “L7,” which meant you were a square. You know, combining “l33t” with “L7.” Anyway, thanks for helping to unconfuse me! 
I’m down with that. In fact, I say we go back to Latin.
I see I’m a bit late, but you don’t have to use numbers. As you can see, |'s, /'s, &'s, ~'s, or pretty much any ASCII character you can get your hands on is fair game.
Anyway, back to the OP, I agree that HE4T is probably just a coincidence, and was never intended to mean “HEAT”.