Let $U \subset \mathbb{R}^{n}$ be an open set and let $f: U \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ be a differentiable function on $U$ such that $\left\|\left.D f\right|_{x}\right\| \leqslant M$ for some constant $M$ and all $x \in U$, where $\left\|\left.D f\right|_{x}\right\|$ denotes the operator norm of the linear map $\left.D f\right|_{x}$. Let $[a, b]=\{t a+(1-t) b: 0 \leqslant t \leqslant 1\}\left(a, b, \in \mathbb{R}^{n}\right)$ be a straight-line segment contained in $U$. Prove that $|f(b)-f(a)| \leqslant M\|b-a\|$, where $\|\cdot\|$ denotes the Euclidean norm on $\mathbb{R}^{n}$.

Prove that if $U$ is an open ball and $\left.D f\right|_{x}=0$ for each $x \in U$, then $f$ is constant on $U$.