14 ms·

Adobe has released the last Flash update ever

203 points by velmu 6y ago

osdotsystem 6y ago
Does it change anything?
- bartvk 6y ago
  It says "December 8,2020: Assorted functional fixes". Apparently not security fixes. I think the functional fix is that they show reminders because in the release notes, it says: "Some users may continue to see reminders from Adobe to uninstall Flash Player from their system". Adobe seems to say that there aren't security fixes, because they say on October 13, 2020: "Assorted security and functional fixes". https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/release-note/fp_32_air_32_release_notes.html#fixed_issues https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/release-note/fp_32_air_...
ulfw 6y ago
When was the last REAL update that added anything of value? Many years ago?
dijksterhuis 6y ago
I got the pop up "please update flash" dialog on my creaky old MacBook Pro yesterday. I clicked skip/cancel from muscle memory and IIRC it took me to an uninstall page! First time I've come across that behaviour!
- ketzu 6y ago
  The dialog actually says "please uninstall flash", it took me off guard as well. It just looks the same as ever.
  - dijksterhuis 6y ago
    Ah fair enough. I saw Adobe flash and assumed it was YAPA* so clicked the left hand button. * Yet Another Pointless Update
jhoechtl 6y ago
Reminds me of a bar in town which celebrates the last opening ever since ... the last five years?
- jaifraic 6y ago
  Well, did it ever close? I live in Germany and there are a few bars here that are open around the clock. Many of them hat to close for the first time in years because of the Corona lockdown. There's an anecdote about the "Elbschlosskeller" in Hamburg: they didn't have a key for the front door at all, so they had to install a new lock to be able to lock up. Before that, the pub was open continuously for about 70 years
3stripe 6y ago
For such a seminal web technology, I thought the 'thanks/goodbye' page was a huge missed opportunity from Flash... there's so much goodwill and nostalgia for the old days and they "celebrate" it with urm... https://get3.adobe.com/flashplayer/thankyou/ https://get3.adobe.com/flashplayer/thankyou/
- stephenr 6y ago
  Ah yes, the good old days when anyone with a bad idea and a little bit of time could chew up your CPU cycles and run ridiculously insecure code on your computer without consent.
  - oblio 6y ago
    We're so lucky that this has changed (narrator: it hasn't). It definitely doesn't happen anymore (narrator: it still happens). And it definitely doesn't happen in absolutely every browser out there and it can't really be blocked (narrator: it does, it is just done with JavaScript, which only hermits disable).
    - stephenr 6y ago
      Name one browser-embedded technology in distribution today that has had even half as many security vulnerabilities as Flash has had over its lifetime? If your world view is "block javascript or let any and all javascript run", I don't know how to help you, because that isn't reality.
      - oblio 6y ago
        > Name one browser-embedded technology in distribution today that has had even half as many security vulnerabilities as Flash has had over its lifetime? Why should I name a "browser-embedded technology"? I can just point out browser vulnerabilities. https://www.cvedetails.com/product/3264/Mozilla-Firefox.html?vendor_id=452 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/3264/Mozilla-Firefox.html... https://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?vendor_id=1224 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?... If anything, they're not that great against Flash: https://www.cvedetails.com/product/6761/Adobe-Flash-Player.html?vendor_id=53 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/6761/Adobe-Flash-Player.h... Keep in mind that Flash itself was a runtime, much as a browser is. More limited, but still pretty big. > If your world view is "block javascript or let any and all javascript run", I don't know how to help you, because that isn't reality. You can't help me, I think no one can. For now we can still kind of run ad blockers, even though Chrome is working hard on stealthily removing them. But for regular users, who don't run them (probably 99% of users out there), how do they protect themselves from cryptominers? From nasty ads?
Zitrax 6y ago
"Today marks the final scheduled release of Flash Player for all regions outside of Mainland China." So not 100% true that it's the last update ever if China will get further updates.
- JosephRedfern 6y ago
  You’re probably right, but could it also be that mainland China isn’t getting an update at all?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
I hope someone is archiving this and prepared to hack the binaries so they still work after Adobe's deadline.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  One can still download the standalone player and download old games and animation to play them. I do this from time to time since some of the old games were rather entertaining.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  IIRC there was a tool years ago (by Google?) that could convert flash to html5. I'm sure it was targeted at Flash advertisements.
snvzz 6y ago
They could release it as open source, for history preservation reasons. But the greedy fucks they are, they won't. On the positive side, at least open implementations won't be dealing with a moving target anymore.
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  Well Ruffle is already well on the way to providing a viable modern flash player https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/ Using Rust and wasm for browser. They have browser plugin and desktop versions too. I've been trying to contribute, and it's really already able to play a large amount of content well.
  - sq_ 6y ago
    > it's really already able to play a large amount of content well Can confirm. I've gone through and downloaded the .swf's for some games I had nostalgia for, and ruffle has played a significant chunk of them quite well. For a relatively early version, I'd say that's pretty good.
    - sq_ 6y ago
      One thing to note, they're still in the early stages of supporting AVM2/ActionScript 3.0 [0], so if you've got a pile of newish .swf's you'd like to try, they may not work yet. [0] https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/1368 https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/1368
      - sammorrowdrums 6y ago
        This is true, however Mike who runs the project seems like a wonderful overlord for it. He's really kind and welcoming with new contributors, gives meaningful and thoughtful PR feedback and I can see that he'll foster the community required to see the project through. Hopefully sponsors help to make sure it gets there. Certainly I've enjoyed contributing so far, and I think this is my pet OS project for the next while.
gscott 6y ago
At least we still have Sliverlight
- unnouinceput 6y ago
  Yeah, no. It's same dead just like Flash and Java applets. It's just Microsoft keeps it around since, unlike Apple or Google, are hoarders. I mean you can, if you want, spun up VS2019 and write an MFC application just like it's year 2000.
- pixel16 6y ago
  Silver light is eol next year
maxharris 6y ago
Edit: sorry I made you angry. I didn't know that people are still sore about Flash. My memories of it were that it was buggy, made my computer overheat and crash.
- Causality1 6y ago
  It's not Flash's fault that it was misused. Flash was a great tool for creating and sharing resolution-agnostic high quality multimedia content using incredibly small amounts of bandwidth. You weren't supposed to build entire websites with it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - marcodave 6y ago
    I guess the same could be said for HTML+Javascript
    - achairapart 6y ago
      Exactly, aren't SPAs the new Flash?[0] [0]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C270SViXAAAzTLh?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C270SViXAAAzTLh?format=jpg&name=...
  - robertoandred 6y ago
    Adobe’s app for creating that content hasn’t gone anywhere.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- echelon 6y ago
  > I am glad that Flash is gone. Here is Steve Jobs's "Thoughts on Flash" letter from 2010 that brought it down: https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple... And now we have giant js bundles composed of thousands of little libraries, ad hoc animation, subpar media playback. The web stack wasn't prepared to match the ease of authorship and distribution of Flash. It still isn't up to the same par, and it's been 15 years. If Adobe had open sourced the entire standard and the player itself early on, they'd still have the best authorship tool and would have done amazing things. I don't know what they were thinking. They had an awesome tool, but their strategy was so wrong. Flash was like PHP. Admittedly not the prettiest, but people did amazing things with it. It was a tool that worked for a lot of people. Teenagers were using Flash and getting really good. Steve didn't want Flash eating his batteries, so he killed it on Apple. He also left us with the fucking robber barron App Store and the concept that we can't run stuff or upgrade our own devices. Seems like Apple shouldn't be able to dictate what you can or can't run on their platform - that's monopoly power. They killed Flash. Steve was worse than Flash and stole from us.
Keyframe 6y ago
Skip intro, games, interactive CDs (Director), weird UX (like 2advanced) - that was a big part of web's middle ages.
sammorrowdrums 6y ago
Luckily Ruffle has come along just in time... It has already made huge amounts of content playable and I a lot more soon, in both desktop and browser. It is the open source hero we need. Many sites like Newgrounds(a major sponsor) already using it in places. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25242115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25242115 - https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/
- AnssiH 6y ago
  Is it better than gnash and lightspark?
  - lights0123 6y ago
    I believe that one of those currently has better ActionScript support, but ruffle is better architected and is WebAssembly first—meaning that a simple WebExtension supported by all browsers can be used to provide support for existing Flash content.
nakedgremlin 6y ago
Oh the fond memories. I remember being able to develop immersive multi-touch experiences and prototypes using ActionScript 3; there was a cottage industry of businesses supporting these types of application builds. All this existed before the surge of JavaScript innovation and, of course, the entire modern mobile app ecosystem.
- thanksforthe42 6y ago
  (it was the Apple ecosystem that killed flash)
  - angry_octet 6y ago
    At the time, it was said to be because Flash was using too many cycles to be responsive on the iPhone, but I wonder if it wasn't a sensible security decision too.
    - thanksforthe42 6y ago
      Doesn't surprise me Apple chose the laziest solution. Not like their customers care.
      - angry_octet 6y ago
        It isn't like Apple had the ability to re-architect Flash for their platform. Not supporting Flash on iOS was a huge push towards HTML5 (and native iOS apps). Steve Jobs, "Thoughts on Flash",2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple...
        thanksforthe42 6y ago
        I don't know if it's responsible to reference a propaganda outlet. This is the same organization that lies about privacy and security.. Anyway on topic. Their competition made a safe flash environment. And pages would ask if you wanted to run Flash. And native iOS apps are bad for everyone. Vendor lock-in is bad for customers. It's bad for programmers who are at the will of Apple. You can see them fighting against web apps to this day. They are a horrible company and bad for capitalism. You should recognize yourself as an apologist.
greatgib 6y ago
Next time you use some proprietary technology because you don't care about open source values, think about that: "and it will block Flash content from running on January 12th, 2021." This is a good example of the lack of respect tech companies have for their users! After so many years, you learn suddenly that in 1 month of time you will not be able to open existing content anymore. I would have understood if they had only EOL it and also displayed a warning of obsolescence and risk alert for someone using the plugin that will not be updated anymore. But imagine the huge amount of content already existing that is lost forever? Even worse, if you had created some yourselves and would not be able to see it anymore. Imagine one day Microsoft saying that they are deprecating Office documents (docx, xlsx) as now everything will be done online with office365 and so existing office installation will be remotely disabled to not be able to open documents anymore in 1 month...
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  This EOL was announced three years ago. The notifications you're wanting have been present in most browsers nearly that long.
  - greatgib 6y ago
    The EOL yes, but not that they will do an update to lock any existing player.
- hamandcheese 6y ago
  If flash won’t be getting security patches, disabling it completely is the most responsible thing to do. Otherwise, users will be taught to ignore the warnings.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - kevincox 6y ago
    But for cases where you trust the site that you are on and it is delivered via a secure connection I should be able to decide that I want to give that site access to my computer.
rubenfonseca 6y ago
Cool! This battle was won. Now the next one: kill Electron.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  Good luck with that. There is no good alternative to Electron yet.
  - willis936 6y ago
    There isn’t a good flash alternative either, but that’s gone too.
    - angry_octet 6y ago
      As long as bad alternatives keep getting accepted good alternatives won't get enough traction. If corporates started banning Electron (i.e. Teams#, Slack 'thick' installs) there would be motivation to come up with something better. # Wormable interactionless RCE via Teams (Electron) a few months ago and they refused to acknowledge it.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    My web browser is one. Although luckily most electron apps are available on the web as well.
- thanksforthe42 6y ago
  Ahhhh yes the much better solution of paying Apple 1000$ to compile a JavaScript app and 125$/yr /s
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  What's wrong with electron apps? I thought it was cool because they're a good way to make things cross platform.
  - rchaud 6y ago
nirui 6y ago
I understand why people here are so pissed about Flash, but if I be completely honest with you, IMO this tech was part of the stuff that made the "old" web so vibrant. I remember about 15 years ago, there was a Flash animations channel on a Chinese website PCOnline.com.cn (Pacific Computer Network), many "Flashkers" published their art works and games there, Little Cherry Cartoon, ShiHuang Animations and that green bean frog to name a few. It was the number 1 place I went to every time when I back from school (that every half month). For Americans, if you visit NASA.gov in around 2005 (I maybe misremembered the exact time), their intro page was a Flash animation featuring rocket launch and other stuff. And that animation was really cool and moving. All of that is no more in today's web. Today's web only gives you few pictures or maybe a video in the background, and a big highlighted "Sign Up"||"Get Started" button. They are less and less "Look me, I'm so cool", and the resonance is mostly gone. It's sad that Adobe was unable to address the security and stability issue in the Flash Player. Bye Flash, it was really fun.
- justsee 6y ago
  It's true, Flash created and supported a special scene of creativity which drew in both artists and programmers in a way the felt new and unique, and seemed to last for almost a decade from ~2000 - ~2010. Who could forget Yugo Nakamura's explorations in the early noughties, and many others which defined the early scene. Even a decade or more ago some pretty impressive experiences were being delivered web-only. I ran a team in London where we really explored pushing the capabilities of the Flash player. Granted we were just operating in a digital marketing context, in an environment where more involved gaming was already occurring, but we still delivered what feel like pretty decent 2d-gaming experiences, such as Professor Green and the Eco-Rangers: https://youtu.be/gUY2bVnhm44?t=85 https://youtu.be/gUY2bVnhm44?t=85. Back then I remember key figures from the Adobe team visiting our London office and candidly telling us the reason Flash was being blocked, esp. on mobile, was entirely due to commercial reasons by Apple, and not for technical reasons. I believed them at that stage, but in hindsight it does appear there were serious performance, energy and security issues, but ex-Adobe engineers might want to chime in on that... As someone who lived through that phase of web indulgence, I'm not mournful of a more indulgent time. It was a beautiful, exploratory phase, but the explosion in pointless, nonsense preloaders and custom UI represented usability ignorance and was not something to cherish. In recent times the creativity and complexity has increased significantly in areas where it matters, such as web gaming, whereas in areas where it doesn't, such as UI interfaces to explore and understand information, it has gotten marginally or a lot better, depending on the context...
antihero 6y ago
It really fucking annoys me that they are not just EOL, the copy suggests that they are forcibly disabling it? What about all the old Flash content that will never be updated? I am talking about things like Ishkur's EDM guide (the new one is kind of terrible and lacks the sass of the Flash based on). How are we supposed to use that any more?
- thanksforthe42 6y ago
  Security is the major reason. I can imagine spinning up a virtual machine to use legacy flash content.
- nindalf 6y ago
  > How are we supposed to use that any more? https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/
cblconfederate 6y ago
Sad look for tech industry: 15 years later, there is no comprehensive alternative, web tech is slow and annoying, and videoconferencing in the browser is basically a space heater. Flash did all of these and more
- rchaud 6y ago
  > Flash did all of these and more and on hardware that was less powerful than a premium phone today.
eimrine 6y ago
Have i understood right that the only thing this update does is to disallow my pc run any flash content after january 12? I use flash in firefox browser very often for some reasons and definitely will use it after 12 january so i just afraid to update.
iso1631 6y ago
Some mention about nostalgia. I'm afraid whenever I think of flash, I think mainly of "punch the monkey" and dodgy .so files in my browser. I won't miss it.
mejutoco 6y ago
This week I was listening to the radio and the host said (live) that he could not see the script (he made a bigger than usual pause) because of a flash update. I had to laugh. Other members of the show referred to "remind me later" as "kill me later". That evening, watching some movie online it suddenly stopped. I check and it is the same flash update. I guess Flash updates bring us together in a bonding experience. A pity for the environment that enabled so many media experiments and animations. I won't miss the memory leaks or the updates, though.
brutuscat 6y ago
For everyone fond and nostalgic of any flash content, the Internet Archive is now emulating Flash animations (using Ruffle https://ruffle.rs https://ruffle.rs), games and toys in their software collection. https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/19/flash-animations-live-forever-at-the-internet-archive/ https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/19/flash-animations-live-fo...
thanksforthe42 6y ago
Yesterday I was asked for my email for a fresh install of Windows 10. This immediately enraged me and I considered Linux. I couldn't help but to consider Apple. But Apple is worse, they started the trend of collecting your information just to use their product. Apple is the reason Microsoft can ask for an email. Apple is the reason for the death of Flash. Apple bent at the knee to china. Apple uses pricing as a marketing tactic. Any support of that company is bad capitalism.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  You can't reliably use an apple device without icloud anymore. So if an email pissed you off with Windows, Apple is going to be no better. Then youve really got a nanny state to deal with. I don't have an email associated with my windows version. I opted out. I don't sign into anything windows related. But I swear if I have to authorize every exe I download from github, I'm just gonna be a full on linux junkie.
- officeplant 6y ago
  Reminder that if you disconnect from the internet while setting up win10 you won't be asked for a microsoft account and can make a local only account like in the past. You can also use this to allow you to tweak personalization settings on an unactivated copy of windows before it hits up the activation servers and locks you out of personalization options.
Grakel 6y ago
Now do Acrobat Reader.
rchaud 6y ago
Does anyone know of websites or YT channels that focus on creative projects that make use of post-Flash technologies like WebGL, three.js, GSAP etc.? What made Flash great was that it was an authoring tool that just let you be weird if you wanted to. The web of the 2010s feels so sterile with cookie-cutter responsive templates. The weirdness is almost entirely restricted to meme images drawn in MSPaint or videos from YT'ers or TikTokers trying to get a TV deal. I'd love have a developer take a look at some the Flash website tours on the Web Design Museum YT channel and comment on whether rebuilding those in HTML, CSS and JS only is feasible. Some of those websites were built 20 years ago and look far more advanced than what we see these days.
- InvisibleUp 6y ago
  Here's two sites I like: https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/chrome https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/chrome https://mrdoob.neocities.org/ https://mrdoob.neocities.org/
  - rchaud 6y ago
    appreciate it, thanks
throwawaysea 6y ago
I'll miss the Flash era. I feel like there was significantly greater creativity enabled by it than we see today in the HTML5 era. Flash is also much easier to develop for. Yes the security issues were not great. But those can be addressed. Building some of Flash's capabilities into browsers is just shifting where the complexity sits. But the experience of building on web standards is still terrible, and I don't think these standards are as open as people think, since they seem to be primarily controlled/steered by Google. As as for Steve Job's anti-Flash missive - obviously that was to justify proprietary Apple native technologies (specific to their hardware) displacing what Flash provided. I'm sad the HN crowd ate it all up.
- robertoandred 6y ago
  Adobe Animate (née Flash) still exists. It just exports to standard HTML/CSS/JavaScript now.
jzer0cool 6y ago
I really liked flash as a creative development tool. Anyone here have experience using the newer Adobe Animate and getting it working fine on websites?
dwheeler 6y ago
In memorium, I recommend playing "Badgers | 10 Hours": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGlyFc79BUE&list=FLqVd9KhDa2i5c18AY5cXohA&index=32 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGlyFc79BUE&list=FLqVd9KhDa2...
hda111 6y ago
That’s the first version that is 100 % secure.

203 points by velmu 6y ago

osdotsystem 6y ago

Does it change anything?

bartvk 6y ago
It says "December 8,2020: Assorted functional fixes". Apparently not security fixes. I think the functional fix is that they show reminders because in the release notes, it says: "Some users may continue to see reminders from Adobe to uninstall Flash Player from their system". Adobe seems to say that there aren't security fixes, because they say on October 13, 2020: "Assorted security and functional fixes". https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/release-note/fp_32_air_32_release_notes.html#fixed_issues https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/release-note/fp_32_air_...

ulfw 6y ago

When was the last REAL update that added anything of value? Many years ago?

dijksterhuis 6y ago

I got the pop up "please update flash" dialog on my creaky old MacBook Pro yesterday. I clicked skip/cancel from muscle memory and IIRC it took me to an uninstall page! First time I've come across that behaviour!

ketzu 6y ago
The dialog actually says "please uninstall flash", it took me off guard as well. It just looks the same as ever.
- dijksterhuis 6y ago
  Ah fair enough. I saw Adobe flash and assumed it was YAPA* so clicked the left hand button. * Yet Another Pointless Update

jhoechtl 6y ago

Reminds me of a bar in town which celebrates the last opening ever since ... the last five years?

jaifraic 6y ago
Well, did it ever close? I live in Germany and there are a few bars here that are open around the clock. Many of them hat to close for the first time in years because of the Corona lockdown. There's an anecdote about the "Elbschlosskeller" in Hamburg: they didn't have a key for the front door at all, so they had to install a new lock to be able to lock up. Before that, the pub was open continuously for about 70 years

3stripe 6y ago

For such a seminal web technology, I thought the 'thanks/goodbye' page was a huge missed opportunity from Flash... there's so much goodwill and nostalgia for the old days and they "celebrate" it with urm... https://get3.adobe.com/flashplayer/thankyou/ https://get3.adobe.com/flashplayer/thankyou/

stephenr 6y ago
Ah yes, the good old days when anyone with a bad idea and a little bit of time could chew up your CPU cycles and run ridiculously insecure code on your computer without consent.
- oblio 6y ago
  We're so lucky that this has changed (narrator: it hasn't). It definitely doesn't happen anymore (narrator: it still happens). And it definitely doesn't happen in absolutely every browser out there and it can't really be blocked (narrator: it does, it is just done with JavaScript, which only hermits disable).
  - stephenr 6y ago
    Name one browser-embedded technology in distribution today that has had even half as many security vulnerabilities as Flash has had over its lifetime? If your world view is "block javascript or let any and all javascript run", I don't know how to help you, because that isn't reality.
    - oblio 6y ago
      > Name one browser-embedded technology in distribution today that has had even half as many security vulnerabilities as Flash has had over its lifetime? Why should I name a "browser-embedded technology"? I can just point out browser vulnerabilities. https://www.cvedetails.com/product/3264/Mozilla-Firefox.html?vendor_id=452 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/3264/Mozilla-Firefox.html... https://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?vendor_id=1224 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?... If anything, they're not that great against Flash: https://www.cvedetails.com/product/6761/Adobe-Flash-Player.html?vendor_id=53 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/6761/Adobe-Flash-Player.h... Keep in mind that Flash itself was a runtime, much as a browser is. More limited, but still pretty big. > If your world view is "block javascript or let any and all javascript run", I don't know how to help you, because that isn't reality. You can't help me, I think no one can. For now we can still kind of run ad blockers, even though Chrome is working hard on stealthily removing them. But for regular users, who don't run them (probably 99% of users out there), how do they protect themselves from cryptominers? From nasty ads?

Zitrax 6y ago

"Today marks the final scheduled release of Flash Player for all regions outside of Mainland China." So not 100% true that it's the last update ever if China will get further updates.

JosephRedfern 6y ago
You’re probably right, but could it also be that mainland China isn’t getting an update at all?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago

I hope someone is archiving this and prepared to hack the binaries so they still work after Adobe's deadline.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
One can still download the standalone player and download old games and animation to play them. I do this from time to time since some of the old games were rather entertaining.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
IIRC there was a tool years ago (by Google?) that could convert flash to html5. I'm sure it was targeted at Flash advertisements.

snvzz 6y ago

They could release it as open source, for history preservation reasons. But the greedy fucks they are, they won't. On the positive side, at least open implementations won't be dealing with a moving target anymore.

sammorrowdrums 6y ago
Well Ruffle is already well on the way to providing a viable modern flash player https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/ Using Rust and wasm for browser. They have browser plugin and desktop versions too. I've been trying to contribute, and it's really already able to play a large amount of content well.
- sq_ 6y ago
  > it's really already able to play a large amount of content well Can confirm. I've gone through and downloaded the .swf's for some games I had nostalgia for, and ruffle has played a significant chunk of them quite well. For a relatively early version, I'd say that's pretty good.
  - sq_ 6y ago
    One thing to note, they're still in the early stages of supporting AVM2/ActionScript 3.0 [0], so if you've got a pile of newish .swf's you'd like to try, they may not work yet. [0] https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/1368 https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/1368
    - sammorrowdrums 6y ago
      This is true, however Mike who runs the project seems like a wonderful overlord for it. He's really kind and welcoming with new contributors, gives meaningful and thoughtful PR feedback and I can see that he'll foster the community required to see the project through. Hopefully sponsors help to make sure it gets there. Certainly I've enjoyed contributing so far, and I think this is my pet OS project for the next while.

gscott 6y ago

At least we still have Sliverlight

unnouinceput 6y ago
Yeah, no. It's same dead just like Flash and Java applets. It's just Microsoft keeps it around since, unlike Apple or Google, are hoarders. I mean you can, if you want, spun up VS2019 and write an MFC application just like it's year 2000.
pixel16 6y ago
Silver light is eol next year

maxharris 6y ago

Edit: sorry I made you angry. I didn't know that people are still sore about Flash. My memories of it were that it was buggy, made my computer overheat and crash.

Causality1 6y ago
It's not Flash's fault that it was misused. Flash was a great tool for creating and sharing resolution-agnostic high quality multimedia content using incredibly small amounts of bandwidth. You weren't supposed to build entire websites with it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- marcodave 6y ago
  I guess the same could be said for HTML+Javascript
  - achairapart 6y ago
    Exactly, aren't SPAs the new Flash?[0] [0]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C270SViXAAAzTLh?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C270SViXAAAzTLh?format=jpg&name=...
- robertoandred 6y ago
  Adobe’s app for creating that content hasn’t gone anywhere.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
echelon 6y ago
> I am glad that Flash is gone. Here is Steve Jobs's "Thoughts on Flash" letter from 2010 that brought it down: https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple... And now we have giant js bundles composed of thousands of little libraries, ad hoc animation, subpar media playback. The web stack wasn't prepared to match the ease of authorship and distribution of Flash. It still isn't up to the same par, and it's been 15 years. If Adobe had open sourced the entire standard and the player itself early on, they'd still have the best authorship tool and would have done amazing things. I don't know what they were thinking. They had an awesome tool, but their strategy was so wrong. Flash was like PHP. Admittedly not the prettiest, but people did amazing things with it. It was a tool that worked for a lot of people. Teenagers were using Flash and getting really good. Steve didn't want Flash eating his batteries, so he killed it on Apple. He also left us with the fucking robber barron App Store and the concept that we can't run stuff or upgrade our own devices. Seems like Apple shouldn't be able to dictate what you can or can't run on their platform - that's monopoly power. They killed Flash. Steve was worse than Flash and stole from us.

Keyframe 6y ago

Skip intro, games, interactive CDs (Director), weird UX (like 2advanced) - that was a big part of web's middle ages.

sammorrowdrums 6y ago

Luckily Ruffle has come along just in time... It has already made huge amounts of content playable and I a lot more soon, in both desktop and browser. It is the open source hero we need. Many sites like Newgrounds(a major sponsor) already using it in places. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25242115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25242115 - https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/

AnssiH 6y ago
Is it better than gnash and lightspark?
- lights0123 6y ago
  I believe that one of those currently has better ActionScript support, but ruffle is better architected and is WebAssembly first—meaning that a simple WebExtension supported by all browsers can be used to provide support for existing Flash content.

nakedgremlin 6y ago

Oh the fond memories. I remember being able to develop immersive multi-touch experiences and prototypes using ActionScript 3; there was a cottage industry of businesses supporting these types of application builds. All this existed before the surge of JavaScript innovation and, of course, the entire modern mobile app ecosystem.

thanksforthe42 6y ago
(it was the Apple ecosystem that killed flash)
- angry_octet 6y ago
  At the time, it was said to be because Flash was using too many cycles to be responsive on the iPhone, but I wonder if it wasn't a sensible security decision too.
  - thanksforthe42 6y ago
    Doesn't surprise me Apple chose the laziest solution. Not like their customers care.
    - angry_octet 6y ago
      It isn't like Apple had the ability to re-architect Flash for their platform. Not supporting Flash on iOS was a huge push towards HTML5 (and native iOS apps). Steve Jobs, "Thoughts on Flash",2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple...
      - thanksforthe42 6y ago
        I don't know if it's responsible to reference a propaganda outlet. This is the same organization that lies about privacy and security.. Anyway on topic. Their competition made a safe flash environment. And pages would ask if you wanted to run Flash. And native iOS apps are bad for everyone. Vendor lock-in is bad for customers. It's bad for programmers who are at the will of Apple. You can see them fighting against web apps to this day. They are a horrible company and bad for capitalism. You should recognize yourself as an apologist.

greatgib 6y ago

Next time you use some proprietary technology because you don't care about open source values, think about that: "and it will block Flash content from running on January 12th, 2021." This is a good example of the lack of respect tech companies have for their users! After so many years, you learn suddenly that in 1 month of time you will not be able to open existing content anymore. I would have understood if they had only EOL it and also displayed a warning of obsolescence and risk alert for someone using the plugin that will not be updated anymore. But imagine the huge amount of content already existing that is lost forever? Even worse, if you had created some yourselves and would not be able to see it anymore. Imagine one day Microsoft saying that they are deprecating Office documents (docx, xlsx) as now everything will be done online with office365 and so existing office installation will be remotely disabled to not be able to open documents anymore in 1 month...

jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
This EOL was announced three years ago. The notifications you're wanting have been present in most browsers nearly that long.
- greatgib 6y ago
  The EOL yes, but not that they will do an update to lock any existing player.
hamandcheese 6y ago
If flash won’t be getting security patches, disabling it completely is the most responsible thing to do. Otherwise, users will be taught to ignore the warnings.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kevincox 6y ago
  But for cases where you trust the site that you are on and it is delivered via a secure connection I should be able to decide that I want to give that site access to my computer.

rubenfonseca 6y ago

Cool! This battle was won. Now the next one: kill Electron.

speedgoose 6y ago
Good luck with that. There is no good alternative to Electron yet.
- willis936 6y ago
  There isn’t a good flash alternative either, but that’s gone too.
  - angry_octet 6y ago
    As long as bad alternatives keep getting accepted good alternatives won't get enough traction. If corporates started banning Electron (i.e. Teams#, Slack 'thick' installs) there would be motivation to come up with something better. # Wormable interactionless RCE via Teams (Electron) a few months ago and they refused to acknowledge it.
- kevincox 6y ago
  My web browser is one. Although luckily most electron apps are available on the web as well.
thanksforthe42 6y ago
Ahhhh yes the much better solution of paying Apple 1000$ to compile a JavaScript app and 125$/yr /s
MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
What's wrong with electron apps? I thought it was cool because they're a good way to make things cross platform.
- rchaud 6y ago

nirui 6y ago

I understand why people here are so pissed about Flash, but if I be completely honest with you, IMO this tech was part of the stuff that made the "old" web so vibrant. I remember about 15 years ago, there was a Flash animations channel on a Chinese website PCOnline.com.cn (Pacific Computer Network), many "Flashkers" published their art works and games there, Little Cherry Cartoon, ShiHuang Animations and that green bean frog to name a few. It was the number 1 place I went to every time when I back from school (that every half month). For Americans, if you visit NASA.gov in around 2005 (I maybe misremembered the exact time), their intro page was a Flash animation featuring rocket launch and other stuff. And that animation was really cool and moving. All of that is no more in today's web. Today's web only gives you few pictures or maybe a video in the background, and a big highlighted "Sign Up"||"Get Started" button. They are less and less "Look me, I'm so cool", and the resonance is mostly gone. It's sad that Adobe was unable to address the security and stability issue in the Flash Player. Bye Flash, it was really fun.

justsee 6y ago
It's true, Flash created and supported a special scene of creativity which drew in both artists and programmers in a way the felt new and unique, and seemed to last for almost a decade from ~2000 - ~2010. Who could forget Yugo Nakamura's explorations in the early noughties, and many others which defined the early scene. Even a decade or more ago some pretty impressive experiences were being delivered web-only. I ran a team in London where we really explored pushing the capabilities of the Flash player. Granted we were just operating in a digital marketing context, in an environment where more involved gaming was already occurring, but we still delivered what feel like pretty decent 2d-gaming experiences, such as Professor Green and the Eco-Rangers: https://youtu.be/gUY2bVnhm44?t=85 https://youtu.be/gUY2bVnhm44?t=85. Back then I remember key figures from the Adobe team visiting our London office and candidly telling us the reason Flash was being blocked, esp. on mobile, was entirely due to commercial reasons by Apple, and not for technical reasons. I believed them at that stage, but in hindsight it does appear there were serious performance, energy and security issues, but ex-Adobe engineers might want to chime in on that... As someone who lived through that phase of web indulgence, I'm not mournful of a more indulgent time. It was a beautiful, exploratory phase, but the explosion in pointless, nonsense preloaders and custom UI represented usability ignorance and was not something to cherish. In recent times the creativity and complexity has increased significantly in areas where it matters, such as web gaming, whereas in areas where it doesn't, such as UI interfaces to explore and understand information, it has gotten marginally or a lot better, depending on the context...

antihero 6y ago

It really fucking annoys me that they are not just EOL, the copy suggests that they are forcibly disabling it? What about all the old Flash content that will never be updated? I am talking about things like Ishkur's EDM guide (the new one is kind of terrible and lacks the sass of the Flash based on). How are we supposed to use that any more?

thanksforthe42 6y ago
Security is the major reason. I can imagine spinning up a virtual machine to use legacy flash content.
nindalf 6y ago
> How are we supposed to use that any more? https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/

cblconfederate 6y ago

Sad look for tech industry: 15 years later, there is no comprehensive alternative, web tech is slow and annoying, and videoconferencing in the browser is basically a space heater. Flash did all of these and more

rchaud 6y ago
> Flash did all of these and more and on hardware that was less powerful than a premium phone today.

eimrine 6y ago

Have i understood right that the only thing this update does is to disallow my pc run any flash content after january 12? I use flash in firefox browser very often for some reasons and definitely will use it after 12 january so i just afraid to update.

iso1631 6y ago

Some mention about nostalgia. I'm afraid whenever I think of flash, I think mainly of "punch the monkey" and dodgy .so files in my browser. I won't miss it.

mejutoco 6y ago

This week I was listening to the radio and the host said (live) that he could not see the script (he made a bigger than usual pause) because of a flash update. I had to laugh. Other members of the show referred to "remind me later" as "kill me later". That evening, watching some movie online it suddenly stopped. I check and it is the same flash update. I guess Flash updates bring us together in a bonding experience. A pity for the environment that enabled so many media experiments and animations. I won't miss the memory leaks or the updates, though.

brutuscat 6y ago

For everyone fond and nostalgic of any flash content, the Internet Archive is now emulating Flash animations (using Ruffle https://ruffle.rs https://ruffle.rs), games and toys in their software collection. https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/19/flash-animations-live-forever-at-the-internet-archive/ https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/19/flash-animations-live-fo...

thanksforthe42 6y ago

Yesterday I was asked for my email for a fresh install of Windows 10. This immediately enraged me and I considered Linux. I couldn't help but to consider Apple. But Apple is worse, they started the trend of collecting your information just to use their product. Apple is the reason Microsoft can ask for an email. Apple is the reason for the death of Flash. Apple bent at the knee to china. Apple uses pricing as a marketing tactic. Any support of that company is bad capitalism.

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
You can't reliably use an apple device without icloud anymore. So if an email pissed you off with Windows, Apple is going to be no better. Then youve really got a nanny state to deal with. I don't have an email associated with my windows version. I opted out. I don't sign into anything windows related. But I swear if I have to authorize every exe I download from github, I'm just gonna be a full on linux junkie.
officeplant 6y ago
Reminder that if you disconnect from the internet while setting up win10 you won't be asked for a microsoft account and can make a local only account like in the past. You can also use this to allow you to tweak personalization settings on an unactivated copy of windows before it hits up the activation servers and locks you out of personalization options.

Grakel 6y ago

Now do Acrobat Reader.

rchaud 6y ago

Does anyone know of websites or YT channels that focus on creative projects that make use of post-Flash technologies like WebGL, three.js, GSAP etc.? What made Flash great was that it was an authoring tool that just let you be weird if you wanted to. The web of the 2010s feels so sterile with cookie-cutter responsive templates. The weirdness is almost entirely restricted to meme images drawn in MSPaint or videos from YT'ers or TikTokers trying to get a TV deal. I'd love have a developer take a look at some the Flash website tours on the Web Design Museum YT channel and comment on whether rebuilding those in HTML, CSS and JS only is feasible. Some of those websites were built 20 years ago and look far more advanced than what we see these days.

InvisibleUp 6y ago
Here's two sites I like: https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/chrome https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/chrome https://mrdoob.neocities.org/ https://mrdoob.neocities.org/
- rchaud 6y ago
  appreciate it, thanks

throwawaysea 6y ago

I'll miss the Flash era. I feel like there was significantly greater creativity enabled by it than we see today in the HTML5 era. Flash is also much easier to develop for. Yes the security issues were not great. But those can be addressed. Building some of Flash's capabilities into browsers is just shifting where the complexity sits. But the experience of building on web standards is still terrible, and I don't think these standards are as open as people think, since they seem to be primarily controlled/steered by Google. As as for Steve Job's anti-Flash missive - obviously that was to justify proprietary Apple native technologies (specific to their hardware) displacing what Flash provided. I'm sad the HN crowd ate it all up.

robertoandred 6y ago
Adobe Animate (née Flash) still exists. It just exports to standard HTML/CSS/JavaScript now.

jzer0cool 6y ago

I really liked flash as a creative development tool. Anyone here have experience using the newer Adobe Animate and getting it working fine on websites?

dwheeler 6y ago

In memorium, I recommend playing "Badgers | 10 Hours": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGlyFc79BUE&list=FLqVd9KhDa2i5c18AY5cXohA&index=32 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGlyFc79BUE&list=FLqVd9KhDa2...

hda111 6y ago

That’s the first version that is 100 % secure.