Firmware Update Kindle firmware 5.16.4

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by DNSB

As for the reasoning behind dropping the u from words due to their origin in the French language which seems to be an insult to the country that was the largest supporter of the American revolutionary war? Francophobia (gallophobia)?

The "u" was dropped because some newspapers paid their authors by the letter. That is the source of many of the early changes for "US" english, simple shortening words so the authors could be paid less.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

The "u" was dropped because some newspapers paid their authors by the letter. That is the source of many of the early changes for "US" english, simple shortening words so the authors could be paid less.

To be fair, Webster was also trying to simplify away some of the more ridiculous spelling anachronisms of English to make it easier to learn to spell. He couldn't eliminate the worst, originating from the Great Vowel Shift, because they're just too pervasive, but dropping the silent 'u' was probably a good idea (IMHO he should have dropped the 'b' from 'debt' and the ridiculous 'g' from 'foreign' as well, but didn't.)

A bunch of his neologisms aren't neologisms at all: spellings with -ize are the original English spelling, and vanished very late, in the 20th century. Some, admittedly conservative, British English style guides still recommend using -ize to this day.

Some of his ideas didn't win out, though -- the original Webster's has, in addition to a whole pile of non-u words spelled in a way which nobody at the original time of printing actually followed, words like 'tung'. You know, the thing in your head. That one never really caught on. (The name of tungsten is not related: it's from Swedish, a heavy stone, not a tongue stone.)

There seems to have been a fad for this sort of thing among very smart people on both sides of the Atlantic. On the other side of the pond a brilliant mathematician with a sideline in writing was gifting the language with a bunch of unusual words in (what was later republished as) _Jabberwocky_, several of which have become part of the language to such a degree that most people don't realise that their appearance in _Jabberwocky_ was as invented as 'brillig'. (Like 'chortled'.)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

A matter of what you are used to? Perhaps you should consider that in your rather endless series of polemics? Are we to expect a diatribe about how the slightly modified Imperial measurements system used in the USA is much to be preferred over the SI system?

Well, the UK thinks Imperial is still good as they've not fully gotten rid of it for a full metric system. the UK really should decode to go fully back to Imperial or fully to metric.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Hmmm... Possibly. I was 14 before I found out that damn Yankee wasn't one word.

Damn Yankee is actually Damn Yankees. It's a book, play, and movie about The Yankees (baseball team).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

Guys, you went quite off-topic. Would you like to continue the dialogue in PMs with each other?

So what language does the 5.16.4 use when you specify English?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by NullNix

To be fair, Webster was also trying to simplify away some of the more ridiculous spelling anachronisms of English to make it easier to learn to spell. He couldn't eliminate the worst, originating from the Great Vowel Shift, because they're just too pervasive, but dropping the silent 'u' was probably a good idea (IMHO he should have dropped the 'b' from 'debt' and the ridiculous 'g' from 'foreign' as well, but didn't.)

A bunch of his neologisms aren't neologisms at all: spellings with -ize are the original English spelling, and vanished very late, in the 20th century. Some, admittedly conservative, British English style guides still recommend using -ize to this day.

Some of his ideas didn't win out, though -- the original Webster's has, in addition to a whole pile of non-u words spelled in a way which nobody at the original time of printing actually followed, words like 'tung'. You know, the thing in your head. That one never really caught on. (The name of tungsten is not related: it's from Swedish, a heavy stone, not a tongue stone.)

There seems to have been a fad for this sort of thing among very smart people on both sides of the Atlantic. On the other side of the pond a brilliant mathematician with a sideline in writing was gifting the language with a bunch of unusual words in (what was later republished as) _Jabberwocky_, several of which have become part of the language to such a degree that most people don't realise that their appearance in _Jabberwocky_ was as invented as 'brillig'. (Like 'chortled'.)

One very good change was getting rid of the name zed for the letter Z (pronounced zee). Zed doesn't really fit when you say the alphabet.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One very good change was getting rid of the name zed for the letter Z (pronounced zee). Zed doesn't really fit when you say the alphabet.

Ah, but that's accent-dependent. Nobody ever pronounces the u in colour or the b in debt (indeed, the b is a late introduction and the word used to be spelled without it). But I pronounce the z when it appears in words 'zuh', like most who speak some variant of Home Counties or Estuary English. Not zee. (Though it is true that spoken as a word, 'zee' matches the spoken form of other letters more. Hm now I'm wondering where those come from. The OED suggests that 'zed' may come from French, which means we can probably blame the Normans: thinking about the French spoken alphabet, it definitely fits in better there. I suspect a lot are much older.)

This is obviously totally relevant to Kindles since you can, uh, read them aloud to your children?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by NullNix

This is obviously totally relevant to Kindles since you can, uh, read them aloud to your children?

On solar charged powerbank after the apocalypse for 5 to 10 years. Till the batteries/cells die. Sad that many won't work on external power when battery dead like old laptops.

Reading to the family was popular till records in 1890s and radio in 1920s. Actually Prague or somewhere in Hungary had books and plays via the telephone before domestic voice radio started. Audio books on 78s used a load of discs and very abridged and produced for the blind.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by NullNix

several of which have become part of the language to such a degree that most people don't realise that their appearance in _Jabberwocky_ was as invented as 'brillig'. (Like 'chortled'.)

"brillig" and "chortled" are both perfectly cromulent words.

[binaryhermit]

Originally Posted by tomsem

On my Scribe, html5test.com gives it a score of 467/555. It says 'You are using Silk 80.4 on an Amazon Kindle Fire'.

My Fire HD 10 Plus scores 474/555. 'Silk 118.1 on a KFTRPWI running Android 9'.

I would be curious what Kindles which have not been updated show, as well as results from other sites that test browser capabilities.

Strangely my PW4 and PW5SE both seem to give 464 of 555 and there are reports of 515 or 518 on reddit

It looks like before the update, it was closer to 150 of 555
EDIT: A 10th gen Kindle running 5.16.3.1that I still need to send to Amazon for tradein gives 152 of 555

[tomsem]

Nice.

Another interesting site: https://browserbench.org

Of course Kindles are pathetically slow (by 2-3 orders of magnitude). But at least more of the suites should at least run.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

"brillig" and "chortled" are both perfectly cromulent words.

... I had no idea cromulent was such a new word. It not only postdates my birth but postdates my entry into the workforce. It's surprisingly hard to realise that I never used it back then.

[Frogm4n]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

It looks like before the update, it was closer to 150 of 555
EDIT: A 10th gen Kindle running 5.16.3.1that I still need to send to Amazon for tradein gives 152 of 555

My Scribe is still on 5.16.3 and scores 152/555 and is said to be "an Amazon Kindle 3 or later". I'm guessing that the 5.16.4 update moved from the regular built-in browser to use the Silk browser proxy so that they can try to bypass browser vulnerabilities that have been used for jailbreaks in the past.

[binaryhermit]

Given that my theory is that the browser is mainly intended to deal with captive portals, how would that work with the Silk proxy?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

Given that my theory is that the browser is mainly intended to deal with captive portals, how would that work with the Silk proxy?

Why would it not? Silk isn't exactly just a proxy.
https://www.electronicdesign.com/con...y-in-the-cloud

Serious privacy issues and it will of course do anything Amazon wants or needs for the kindle. They can have it make any web site perfectly compatible for the Kindle. Amazon's main business is data / hosting / services now, not selling.