17 ms·

Flash Player is about to stop working on Windows 10

212 points by muhahue 6y ago

dunce2020 6y ago
What options are available if I want to keep it, security be damned?
- muhahue 6y ago
  I installed the optional Windows Update and I am not able to reinstall Flash anymore.
- erk__ 6y ago
  Depends what you want to use it for things like https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/ is getting better all the time and works with quite a few games now.
- EamonnMR 6y ago
  Virtual windows XP machine?
  - faeyanpiraat 6y ago
    Why not win7?
    - papito 6y ago
      Look, man. There is an easy way, and there is the COOL way.
- rasz 6y ago
  RunAsDate.exe to the rescue
falcrist 6y ago
Forgive me if this is a stupid question or a bad place to ask, but I still occasionally go back and play some of the old classic flash games from the internet days of yore. Pandemic, Nekogames Parameters, Alien Hominid, etc... Will there still be a way to play those games once all the browsers and operating systems pull the plug on flash?
- EamonnMR 6y ago
  Ruffle.rs and Gnu Gnash are decent emulators, plus Newgrounds had its own player you can install. If you have flv files you can upload them to the internet archive and if you set it up properly, they will be playable with ruffle.rs in the browser, no plugin needed. https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/22/flash-back-further-thoughts-on-flash-at-the-internet-archive/ https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/22/flash-back-further-thoug...
  - samizdis 6y ago
    I don't have a copy of my favourite cartoon from years ago - The Pygmy Shrew - but there is a "ruffle-ised" version of it here: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/699 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/699 However, I can't download the file to upload it to the internet archive. Any tips? (It is, actually, available as a vid file on YT, too, but the original was an flv - here is the YT version: https://youtu.be/d5LA3i_XrVU https://youtu.be/d5LA3i_XrVU )
    - ThatPlayer 6y ago
      Searching the source code for swf real quick gets me https://uploads.ungrounded.net/0/699_Pygmy_Shrew_1.swf https://uploads.ungrounded.net/0/699_Pygmy_Shrew_1.swf You can also use your browser's dev tool's Network tabs to watch it download the swf file when you hit play.
      - samizdis 6y ago
        Yes. Thanks for that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- yenwodyah 6y ago
  Along with Ruffle, there's also Flashpoint, a project to curate an archive of every flash game and animation on the internet. (https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/)
ourcat 6y ago
Chrome is dropping support imminently (at the end of the year). It's been showing a warning and date about it for quite a while (if you still have it active).
- muhahue 6y ago
  They're ending it in January? Edge, Chrome and Chromium are set to drop support in january.
  - ourcat 6y ago
    The warning says "Flash Player will no longer be supported after December 2020". Clicking "Learn More" takes you here : https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/saying-goodbye-flash-chrome/ https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/saying-goodbye-flash...
    - muhahue 6y ago
      Right. They'll pull the plug with version 89 scheduled for January.
      - tyingq 6y ago
        The plug is, I believe already pulled in a way. I set the clock forward to January 13th, and it won't render Flash.
- tyingq 6y ago
  By "dropping support", they mean "it won't work, at all". Set the clock forward on your PC to January 12th, 2021, and try using it. "Adobe will block Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning January 12, 2021"
  - ourcat 6y ago
    See the link in my previous reply below. You've had to manually "Allow" it for a while, if a site needs it. But it's really Adobe dropping support of it, who announced it in 2017. http://web.archive.org/web/20170726000124/https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-update.html http://web.archive.org/web/20170726000124/https://blogs.adob...
kgwxd 6y ago
While millions of kids are doing remote learning? That seems like a terrible idea, there is tons of educational sites using flash.
- tester756 6y ago
  How much time did they have to update? How much they have to wait just because kids have math to do? Teachers can work around it
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted. Flash needs to go away, for sure, but my kids' teachers have still been assigning Flash websites as school tasks - "play this educational game" sort of stuff - in recent months.
  - muhahue 6y ago
    My teachers are also using Flash-enabled sites for their quiz and presentation :( This is simply because the site owners haven't moved on yet for some unknown reasons.
    - vmception 6y ago
      > for some unknown reasons ka-ching educational and government contracts need disruption and this is a symptom
      - egypturnash 6y ago
        Where "disruption" means "waste a bunch of time and money for people to rebuild something that worked perfectly fine until the entire platform it was built on went belly-up"? I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, especially if your budget is next to nonexistent.
        trthomps 6y ago
        Maybe building on proprietary platforms was a bad idea from the start and a poor investment of public resources.
egberts1 6y ago
as an intermediate byte code vulnerability analyst, ActionScript sucks ... royally. good riddance.
superkuh 6y ago
Stop using operating systems that don't respect software freedoms. I know it's a huge ask. But the best time to start dual booting is always now. Adobe abandoned linux flash long ago but I still can easily switch between multiple versions that are available on my whim.
- maya24 6y ago
  Do you have a TV? Do you have a Roku or other streaming box? Do you use a smartphone?
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    > Do you have a TV? No > Do you have a Roku or other streaming box? No > Do you use a smartphone? Yes, reluctantly.
  - superkuh 6y ago
    No. No. No.
  - swebs 6y ago
    >Roku or other streaming box There's LibreElec. The perfect project for that Raspberry Pi you have laying around >smartphone There's Linux distros for some phones now like Mobian
- merrywhether 6y ago
  Some people want appliances, others want tools. For the people who want an appliance-like computing experience, this type of curation is exactly what they signed up for. For people who want a tool-like computing experience, then managing their own security situation is part of what they've signed up for. Neither side of this dichotomy is wrong (I know it's technically a spectrum...). While you sound like someone who views their computer as a tool, plenty of people don't. And I'm sure there are things in your life from which you expect an appliance-like experience as well, while other people may use tool-like versions of that same basic concept.
- listic 6y ago
waiseristy 6y ago
As a preface, I'm a web moron. And as a web moron, I don't understand why the major browsers haven't just created some flash sandbox for these apps to run under. Are there technical limitations to shipping a flash "virtual machine"? Or just a complete lack of will to do so?
- hangonhn 6y ago
  What would be the point of that? Flash is not an open standard and has been abandoned by Adobe. If you're talking about a sandbox in general, isn't that already the case with Javascript? The environment Javascript executes under in a modern browser is really rich and a lot of work has gone into making it secure and performant, none of which can be claimed by Flash.
  - waiseristy 6y ago
    The point would be to preserve a fairly large amount of internet culture from the 90's and 00's. Ruffle.js which has already been mentioned utilizes the fantastic JS sandbox already present, no need to create a new one. The browsers just have to support it by default. I don't know enough about the web to determine whether it would be better to emulate Flash within the JS sandbox, or virtualize the Flash runtime itself
    - hangonhn 6y ago
      It's fine to want to preserve that but I don't think the browser is the right place for it. Flash is actually quite independent of the browser. So to preserve the ability to run what is by now historical applications, would simply mean supporting running Flash on new platforms/OS. https://www.reddit.com/r/flash/comments/h8753v/psa_how_to_use_flash_without_a_browser_and_how_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/flash/comments/h8753v/psa_how_to_us...
      - waiseristy 6y ago
        This is a great way to preserve dedicated flash apps & games. But the tech being independent of the browser doesn't mean developers have integrated it that way. There are still thousands of web pages using tightly integrated flash & HTML that will be broken. You would then need to run the Flash runtime with an HTML&CSS&JS emulator along side, no?
throwaway98908 6y ago
I invite you guys to play some old flash games, for the last time on my 11 year old flash gaming website: boredmob.com
qwerty456127 6y ago
How do I crack it so it won't stop? I don't care it won't get updates but I don't want it to stop working.
- accusitive 6y ago
  It seems like you probably can't, but I think there's some emulators bring written.
  - qwerty456127 6y ago
    There ought to be some registry key for some enterprise users or some bytes to patch in a binary itself. I hope somebody is going to find something like that. If there isn't I'm going to try Windows XP with some old Flash Player version in a VirtualBox. I also expect a version maintained by Harman[1] to leak occasionally. [1]https://services.harman.com/partners/adobe https://services.harman.com/partners/adobe
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  I don't know about cracking, but if you install Trilix Flash decompiler, and can download .swf files of flash games/applets, you can keep using these swf's on your computer forever. You can often find the link to the swf in the source code of the webpage (Ctrl+U on Windows).
- hoseja 6y ago
  There is no reason standalone Flash Projector should stop working too.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I never wanted it in the first place, I was always disappointed the browsers bundled it.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I definitely preferred browsers bundling it, because it was one less security dependency I had to worry about managing. And considering Flash plugins were part of the "older model" of browser add-ons, bringing it in-house allowed browsers to better sandbox and secure it, and prevent other applications from exploiting the same way in. And every browser bundling it also provided a setting (and corresponding enterprise policy configuration) to disable it.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  I don't actually remember it ever being bundled up until Google Chrome?
davio 6y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being a Y2K style surprise to some hopelessly inattentive VMWare customers
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Debatable. The first major VMware version which does not support the installable desktop client has a plenty good enough HTML5 version of the web client. So either/or, you should be good to control your hypervisors without Flash. And at worst, you shouldn't need to use a Flash-based UI to upgrade VCSA or your hypervisors.
  - sofixa 6y ago
    > The first major VMware version which does not support the installable desktop client has a plenty good enough HTML5 version of the web client That's false. The old thick client stopped working with 6.0, which got a very poor, limited and extremely buggy HTML5 client in one of its latest updates. 6.5, latest update, has a somewhat usable but still limited ( missing features) HTML5 UI ( funnily enough some new features were only in the HTML5 UI, while some others were only in the Flash version). The first version that had a fully usable for everything HTML5 UI is 6.7 Update 3, which came out a few months ago.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      I mean, perhaps you use features I just haven't had to, but I don't recall any time in the 6.0-6.5 era needing something the HTML5 client couldn't do servicably.
      - gavindean90 6y ago
        I've seen it mostly in advanced VM management like weird drive configurations.
      - hackmiester 6y ago
        iirc, OVA deployment was unavailable, then buggy.
userbinator 6y ago
Regardless of whether you like Flash, this should be yet another ominous warning that you do not really own your computer anymore. It's one thing to shut down servers used by an online service (and there's already plenty of disgust about that), it's something else entirely to essentially reach into everyone's machines and delete what they don't want! Imagine if Microsoft decided to attempt to wipe all traces of MS-DOS from existence --- this is similar, in that people have spent countless hours of effort and built lots of "applications" upon the platform, and while they would not expect the original company will "support" that eternally, they expect it to still be usable. No doubt there will be something in the EULA that lets them do this, but I still think it's crossing a line. The frog continues to boil slowly...
- Grimm1 6y ago
  Okay but you can't have that way and then have the liability rest on the company for recompense in the case of a vulnerability. That's why this has gone this way because of the threat of being sued.
- SimeVidas 6y ago
  You’d have a point if Flash Player was paid software.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  There are still ways of playing flash for those who truly need to. https://lightspark.github.io/ https://lightspark.github.io/
  - voldacar 6y ago
    Yeah but thats not the parent's point. The problem isn't a lack of ability to play .swf files, it's about the user's control over his machine
    - protoman3000 6y ago
      Can you on your own machine run your own bootloader and execute whatever instruction you would like to execute? If yes, what’s your point?
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
Does that mean I won't have to suffer through my crappy company interactive training videos?
- unnouinceput 6y ago
  Sorry to disappoint you, but your company crappy interactive training videos will still exists. They will simply be upgraded to another player, but their horrible content will still be the same.
- failuser 6y ago
  No, you’ll have to go back to IE under windows XP. Hopefully in a VM.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    A lot of the company garbage only works in IE as it is. Great.
underseacables 6y ago
Is there a way to keep flash going?
- unnouinceput 6y ago
  Yes, of course. Don't make that particular update. Or freeze a virtual machine with flash in it and use that when you want/need.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    I'm actually very confused about this. They make it sound like the change will happen automatically, which makes it sound like there's a kill switch of some kind. Is there?
    - Izkata 6y ago
      From what people are saying above, Chrome has a date-based kill switch built in - if you set your system clock forward, Flash stops working in the current version.
Nuzzerino 6y ago
I wonder if the Flash runtime can be rebuilt in asm.js, WebAssembly, or similar, and then made to seamlessly play the video on an emulated version of Flash Player but with barely noticeable changes to the user. One would think that this cannot be easily blocked by Adobe. If Chrome wants to block it, simply use a De-Googled version of Chromium.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
refracture 6y ago
Maybe it's because I was never a newgrounds kid or whatever but every time I had to use flash for video playback it was always awful and I don't miss it. Good riddance you CPU hungry abomination.
Scarblac 6y ago
I'm in the Netherlands, we are in a Covid lockdown with schools closed at the moment. Next week Christmas holiday is over, and remote school will start once more. And many of the sites they use to keep the younger kids busy have games for learning simple addition, spelling, et cetera. Almost all in Flash. Not looking forward to Monday.
- cft 6y ago
  It's happening on January 12, not on Monday
anthk 6y ago
On bullshit propietary formats like Flash and its supporters, I remind you a lot of w95 era games are now unplayable because of similar reasons. Not even under Bochs, Qemu with a perfectly setup VM with PCI under w95 or w98, with both VGA drivers tested: Cirrus and UniVBE. Flash will follow the same path, but unlike those pesky Direct Draw spin-o-rama games, Ruffle works with ease and back in the day you could play swf embedded videos in a video player with a library. So, stop whinning. We, the older abandonware gaming users have it worse, far worse. ScummVM may support that w95 game one day, but today it doesn't. Oh, and for Sure Scummvm in a near future will make standalone SWF games playable.
- rasz 6y ago
  Name the games. There are plenty of DirectDraw wrappers fixing old games https://www.nongnu.org/wined3d/ https://www.nongnu.org/wined3d/ https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag http://dege.freeweb.hu/ http://dege.freeweb.hu/ https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper https://sol.gfxile.net/ddhack/index.html https://sol.gfxile.net/ddhack/index.html even Win10 ships with own ddraw.dll wrapper.
  - selfhoster11 6y ago
    Those won't fix every game, but fortunately PCem can do a fine job emulating the appropriate hardware.
  - anthk 6y ago
    "La Pesadilla Turca", Spanish edition of "Byzantine: The Betrayal". I tried several OSes and graphic cards, and no luck. Windows 95 with Bochs was close, but still slow. VirtualBox is a no no, too, because the game is really tied to a Pentium processor. Anything faster and you wouldn't react to timed events. Some people launched it under Virtual PC and W95, but I use Slackware, so it doesn't apply.
  - anthk 6y ago
    >even Win10 ships with own ddraw.dll wrapper. And w98, but everyone knows is slow as fuck. It makes playing 2D games from 1999 with a worse performance than a Pentium 90. And, yes, I had to use Wine's DDraw while patching the exes in order to run some games fast on my aunt's W10 machine. Those games (nothing fancy, Trivia games, a fancy Hangman, cards, crosswords, puzzles...) ran like butter in my AMD Athlon with Windows 98, unsurprisily.
sto_hristo 6y ago
Goodbye, old friend. When i was at school i made a nice counter with you and a page loading animation. Your date and text API awed me with its sophistication. And i still have the flash 5 book that i bought with my saved money. Your prophet - 2Advanced, was an inspiration for me. It's nice of corps to be able to do whatever they want with your PC. And MS is really sunshine and lollipops compared to the mobile space - where not only you don't own your device, but at best you actually rent it and are at the complete mercy at the feet of the master. All for the privilege to actively work towards generating ad revenue for the company you rented it from. Most tech in 21 century is something out of those shitty 80s low budget cyber dystopian movies with post apocalyptic undertones. It's bad.
throw7 6y ago
We have reached peak GOS (Grandma Operating System). Most recent example is TLS 1.0 sites. Warn but Allow things to keep working.
vortico 6y ago
Has someone made a JS/WebAssembly implementation of Flash in order to allow Flash games to be played?
- m3at 6y ago
  Yes: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle
m3at 6y ago
I wonder why none of the top comments mention Ruffle[1]? It's a wasm flash player emulator, and it provide the necessary sandboxing. That sounds to me like a reasonable alternative to a buggy and now unsupported official player. [1] https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/
ineedasername 6y ago
Some of my kids' distance learning materials are built in Flash. Less than it was in the Spring, so it seems publishers are scrambling to resolve the issue, but it should make distance learning even more "interesting" in the next few months.
nn3 6y ago
So what's the recommended way of still playing old Flash games you have a local copy of? I'm very fond of some of the older Amanita games, such as Machinarium
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Use Adobe's Flash Projector. It runs swf files directly, outside of a browser.
chipsa 6y ago
I'm a little surprised no one has mentioned CheerpX[0] in this thread. It's supposed to run any Flash file flawlessly, because it's running the Flash runtime. Just through a x86 emulator in WASM, so it re-sandboxes everything. [0]: https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpxflash.html https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpxflash.html

212 points by muhahue 6y ago

dunce2020 6y ago

What options are available if I want to keep it, security be damned?

muhahue 6y ago
I installed the optional Windows Update and I am not able to reinstall Flash anymore.
erk__ 6y ago
Depends what you want to use it for things like https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/ is getting better all the time and works with quite a few games now.
EamonnMR 6y ago
Virtual windows XP machine?
- faeyanpiraat 6y ago
  Why not win7?
  - papito 6y ago
    Look, man. There is an easy way, and there is the COOL way.
rasz 6y ago
RunAsDate.exe to the rescue

falcrist 6y ago

Forgive me if this is a stupid question or a bad place to ask, but I still occasionally go back and play some of the old classic flash games from the internet days of yore. Pandemic, Nekogames Parameters, Alien Hominid, etc... Will there still be a way to play those games once all the browsers and operating systems pull the plug on flash?

EamonnMR 6y ago
Ruffle.rs and Gnu Gnash are decent emulators, plus Newgrounds had its own player you can install. If you have flv files you can upload them to the internet archive and if you set it up properly, they will be playable with ruffle.rs in the browser, no plugin needed. https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/22/flash-back-further-thoughts-on-flash-at-the-internet-archive/ https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/22/flash-back-further-thoug...
- samizdis 6y ago
  I don't have a copy of my favourite cartoon from years ago - The Pygmy Shrew - but there is a "ruffle-ised" version of it here: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/699 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/699 However, I can't download the file to upload it to the internet archive. Any tips? (It is, actually, available as a vid file on YT, too, but the original was an flv - here is the YT version: https://youtu.be/d5LA3i_XrVU https://youtu.be/d5LA3i_XrVU )
  - ThatPlayer 6y ago
    Searching the source code for swf real quick gets me https://uploads.ungrounded.net/0/699_Pygmy_Shrew_1.swf https://uploads.ungrounded.net/0/699_Pygmy_Shrew_1.swf You can also use your browser's dev tool's Network tabs to watch it download the swf file when you hit play.
    - samizdis 6y ago
      Yes. Thanks for that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
yenwodyah 6y ago
Along with Ruffle, there's also Flashpoint, a project to curate an archive of every flash game and animation on the internet. (https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/)

ourcat 6y ago

Chrome is dropping support imminently (at the end of the year). It's been showing a warning and date about it for quite a while (if you still have it active).

muhahue 6y ago
They're ending it in January? Edge, Chrome and Chromium are set to drop support in january.
- ourcat 6y ago
  The warning says "Flash Player will no longer be supported after December 2020". Clicking "Learn More" takes you here : https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/saying-goodbye-flash-chrome/ https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/saying-goodbye-flash...
  - muhahue 6y ago
    Right. They'll pull the plug with version 89 scheduled for January.
    - tyingq 6y ago
      The plug is, I believe already pulled in a way. I set the clock forward to January 13th, and it won't render Flash.
tyingq 6y ago
By "dropping support", they mean "it won't work, at all". Set the clock forward on your PC to January 12th, 2021, and try using it. "Adobe will block Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning January 12, 2021"
- ourcat 6y ago
  See the link in my previous reply below. You've had to manually "Allow" it for a while, if a site needs it. But it's really Adobe dropping support of it, who announced it in 2017. http://web.archive.org/web/20170726000124/https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-update.html http://web.archive.org/web/20170726000124/https://blogs.adob...

kgwxd 6y ago

While millions of kids are doing remote learning? That seems like a terrible idea, there is tons of educational sites using flash.

tester756 6y ago
How much time did they have to update? How much they have to wait just because kids have math to do? Teachers can work around it
ceejayoz 6y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted. Flash needs to go away, for sure, but my kids' teachers have still been assigning Flash websites as school tasks - "play this educational game" sort of stuff - in recent months.
- muhahue 6y ago
  My teachers are also using Flash-enabled sites for their quiz and presentation :( This is simply because the site owners haven't moved on yet for some unknown reasons.
  - vmception 6y ago
    > for some unknown reasons ka-ching educational and government contracts need disruption and this is a symptom
    - egypturnash 6y ago
      Where "disruption" means "waste a bunch of time and money for people to rebuild something that worked perfectly fine until the entire platform it was built on went belly-up"? I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, especially if your budget is next to nonexistent.
      - trthomps 6y ago
        Maybe building on proprietary platforms was a bad idea from the start and a poor investment of public resources.

egberts1 6y ago

as an intermediate byte code vulnerability analyst, ActionScript sucks ... royally. good riddance.

superkuh 6y ago

Stop using operating systems that don't respect software freedoms. I know it's a huge ask. But the best time to start dual booting is always now. Adobe abandoned linux flash long ago but I still can easily switch between multiple versions that are available on my whim.

maya24 6y ago
Do you have a TV? Do you have a Roku or other streaming box? Do you use a smartphone?
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  > Do you have a TV? No > Do you have a Roku or other streaming box? No > Do you use a smartphone? Yes, reluctantly.
- superkuh 6y ago
  No. No. No.
- swebs 6y ago
  >Roku or other streaming box There's LibreElec. The perfect project for that Raspberry Pi you have laying around >smartphone There's Linux distros for some phones now like Mobian
merrywhether 6y ago
Some people want appliances, others want tools. For the people who want an appliance-like computing experience, this type of curation is exactly what they signed up for. For people who want a tool-like computing experience, then managing their own security situation is part of what they've signed up for. Neither side of this dichotomy is wrong (I know it's technically a spectrum...). While you sound like someone who views their computer as a tool, plenty of people don't. And I'm sure there are things in your life from which you expect an appliance-like experience as well, while other people may use tool-like versions of that same basic concept.
listic 6y ago

waiseristy 6y ago

As a preface, I'm a web moron. And as a web moron, I don't understand why the major browsers haven't just created some flash sandbox for these apps to run under. Are there technical limitations to shipping a flash "virtual machine"? Or just a complete lack of will to do so?

hangonhn 6y ago
What would be the point of that? Flash is not an open standard and has been abandoned by Adobe. If you're talking about a sandbox in general, isn't that already the case with Javascript? The environment Javascript executes under in a modern browser is really rich and a lot of work has gone into making it secure and performant, none of which can be claimed by Flash.
- waiseristy 6y ago
  The point would be to preserve a fairly large amount of internet culture from the 90's and 00's. Ruffle.js which has already been mentioned utilizes the fantastic JS sandbox already present, no need to create a new one. The browsers just have to support it by default. I don't know enough about the web to determine whether it would be better to emulate Flash within the JS sandbox, or virtualize the Flash runtime itself
  - hangonhn 6y ago
    It's fine to want to preserve that but I don't think the browser is the right place for it. Flash is actually quite independent of the browser. So to preserve the ability to run what is by now historical applications, would simply mean supporting running Flash on new platforms/OS. https://www.reddit.com/r/flash/comments/h8753v/psa_how_to_use_flash_without_a_browser_and_how_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/flash/comments/h8753v/psa_how_to_us...
    - waiseristy 6y ago
      This is a great way to preserve dedicated flash apps & games. But the tech being independent of the browser doesn't mean developers have integrated it that way. There are still thousands of web pages using tightly integrated flash & HTML that will be broken. You would then need to run the Flash runtime with an HTML&CSS&JS emulator along side, no?

throwaway98908 6y ago

I invite you guys to play some old flash games, for the last time on my 11 year old flash gaming website: boredmob.com

qwerty456127 6y ago

How do I crack it so it won't stop? I don't care it won't get updates but I don't want it to stop working.

accusitive 6y ago
It seems like you probably can't, but I think there's some emulators bring written.
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  There ought to be some registry key for some enterprise users or some bytes to patch in a binary itself. I hope somebody is going to find something like that. If there isn't I'm going to try Windows XP with some old Flash Player version in a VirtualBox. I also expect a version maintained by Harman[1] to leak occasionally. [1]https://services.harman.com/partners/adobe https://services.harman.com/partners/adobe
HenryKissinger 6y ago
I don't know about cracking, but if you install Trilix Flash decompiler, and can download .swf files of flash games/applets, you can keep using these swf's on your computer forever. You can often find the link to the swf in the source code of the webpage (Ctrl+U on Windows).
hoseja 6y ago
There is no reason standalone Flash Projector should stop working too.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

I never wanted it in the first place, I was always disappointed the browsers bundled it.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I definitely preferred browsers bundling it, because it was one less security dependency I had to worry about managing. And considering Flash plugins were part of the "older model" of browser add-ons, bringing it in-house allowed browsers to better sandbox and secure it, and prevent other applications from exploiting the same way in. And every browser bundling it also provided a setting (and corresponding enterprise policy configuration) to disable it.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I don't actually remember it ever being bundled up until Google Chrome?

davio 6y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being a Y2K style surprise to some hopelessly inattentive VMWare customers

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Debatable. The first major VMware version which does not support the installable desktop client has a plenty good enough HTML5 version of the web client. So either/or, you should be good to control your hypervisors without Flash. And at worst, you shouldn't need to use a Flash-based UI to upgrade VCSA or your hypervisors.
- sofixa 6y ago
  > The first major VMware version which does not support the installable desktop client has a plenty good enough HTML5 version of the web client That's false. The old thick client stopped working with 6.0, which got a very poor, limited and extremely buggy HTML5 client in one of its latest updates. 6.5, latest update, has a somewhat usable but still limited ( missing features) HTML5 UI ( funnily enough some new features were only in the HTML5 UI, while some others were only in the Flash version). The first version that had a fully usable for everything HTML5 UI is 6.7 Update 3, which came out a few months ago.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    I mean, perhaps you use features I just haven't had to, but I don't recall any time in the 6.0-6.5 era needing something the HTML5 client couldn't do servicably.
    - gavindean90 6y ago
      I've seen it mostly in advanced VM management like weird drive configurations.
    - hackmiester 6y ago
      iirc, OVA deployment was unavailable, then buggy.

userbinator 6y ago

Regardless of whether you like Flash, this should be yet another ominous warning that you do not really own your computer anymore. It's one thing to shut down servers used by an online service (and there's already plenty of disgust about that), it's something else entirely to essentially reach into everyone's machines and delete what they don't want! Imagine if Microsoft decided to attempt to wipe all traces of MS-DOS from existence --- this is similar, in that people have spent countless hours of effort and built lots of "applications" upon the platform, and while they would not expect the original company will "support" that eternally, they expect it to still be usable. No doubt there will be something in the EULA that lets them do this, but I still think it's crossing a line. The frog continues to boil slowly...

Grimm1 6y ago
Okay but you can't have that way and then have the liability rest on the company for recompense in the case of a vulnerability. That's why this has gone this way because of the threat of being sued.
SimeVidas 6y ago
You’d have a point if Flash Player was paid software.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
There are still ways of playing flash for those who truly need to. https://lightspark.github.io/ https://lightspark.github.io/
- voldacar 6y ago
  Yeah but thats not the parent's point. The problem isn't a lack of ability to play .swf files, it's about the user's control over his machine
  - protoman3000 6y ago
    Can you on your own machine run your own bootloader and execute whatever instruction you would like to execute? If yes, what’s your point?

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

Does that mean I won't have to suffer through my crappy company interactive training videos?

unnouinceput 6y ago
Sorry to disappoint you, but your company crappy interactive training videos will still exists. They will simply be upgraded to another player, but their horrible content will still be the same.
failuser 6y ago
No, you’ll have to go back to IE under windows XP. Hopefully in a VM.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  A lot of the company garbage only works in IE as it is. Great.

underseacables 6y ago

Is there a way to keep flash going?

unnouinceput 6y ago
Yes, of course. Don't make that particular update. Or freeze a virtual machine with flash in it and use that when you want/need.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  I'm actually very confused about this. They make it sound like the change will happen automatically, which makes it sound like there's a kill switch of some kind. Is there?
  - Izkata 6y ago
    From what people are saying above, Chrome has a date-based kill switch built in - if you set your system clock forward, Flash stops working in the current version.

Nuzzerino 6y ago

I wonder if the Flash runtime can be rebuilt in asm.js, WebAssembly, or similar, and then made to seamlessly play the video on an emulated version of Flash Player but with barely noticeable changes to the user. One would think that this cannot be easily blocked by Adobe. If Chrome wants to block it, simply use a De-Googled version of Chromium.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

refracture 6y ago

Maybe it's because I was never a newgrounds kid or whatever but every time I had to use flash for video playback it was always awful and I don't miss it. Good riddance you CPU hungry abomination.

Scarblac 6y ago

I'm in the Netherlands, we are in a Covid lockdown with schools closed at the moment. Next week Christmas holiday is over, and remote school will start once more. And many of the sites they use to keep the younger kids busy have games for learning simple addition, spelling, et cetera. Almost all in Flash. Not looking forward to Monday.

cft 6y ago
It's happening on January 12, not on Monday

anthk 6y ago

On bullshit propietary formats like Flash and its supporters, I remind you a lot of w95 era games are now unplayable because of similar reasons. Not even under Bochs, Qemu with a perfectly setup VM with PCI under w95 or w98, with both VGA drivers tested: Cirrus and UniVBE. Flash will follow the same path, but unlike those pesky Direct Draw spin-o-rama games, Ruffle works with ease and back in the day you could play swf embedded videos in a video player with a library. So, stop whinning. We, the older abandonware gaming users have it worse, far worse. ScummVM may support that w95 game one day, but today it doesn't. Oh, and for Sure Scummvm in a near future will make standalone SWF games playable.

rasz 6y ago
Name the games. There are plenty of DirectDraw wrappers fixing old games https://www.nongnu.org/wined3d/ https://www.nongnu.org/wined3d/ https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag http://dege.freeweb.hu/ http://dege.freeweb.hu/ https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper https://sol.gfxile.net/ddhack/index.html https://sol.gfxile.net/ddhack/index.html even Win10 ships with own ddraw.dll wrapper.
- selfhoster11 6y ago
  Those won't fix every game, but fortunately PCem can do a fine job emulating the appropriate hardware.
- anthk 6y ago
  "La Pesadilla Turca", Spanish edition of "Byzantine: The Betrayal". I tried several OSes and graphic cards, and no luck. Windows 95 with Bochs was close, but still slow. VirtualBox is a no no, too, because the game is really tied to a Pentium processor. Anything faster and you wouldn't react to timed events. Some people launched it under Virtual PC and W95, but I use Slackware, so it doesn't apply.
- anthk 6y ago
  >even Win10 ships with own ddraw.dll wrapper. And w98, but everyone knows is slow as fuck. It makes playing 2D games from 1999 with a worse performance than a Pentium 90. And, yes, I had to use Wine's DDraw while patching the exes in order to run some games fast on my aunt's W10 machine. Those games (nothing fancy, Trivia games, a fancy Hangman, cards, crosswords, puzzles...) ran like butter in my AMD Athlon with Windows 98, unsurprisily.

sto_hristo 6y ago

Goodbye, old friend. When i was at school i made a nice counter with you and a page loading animation. Your date and text API awed me with its sophistication. And i still have the flash 5 book that i bought with my saved money. Your prophet - 2Advanced, was an inspiration for me. It's nice of corps to be able to do whatever they want with your PC. And MS is really sunshine and lollipops compared to the mobile space - where not only you don't own your device, but at best you actually rent it and are at the complete mercy at the feet of the master. All for the privilege to actively work towards generating ad revenue for the company you rented it from. Most tech in 21 century is something out of those shitty 80s low budget cyber dystopian movies with post apocalyptic undertones. It's bad.

throw7 6y ago

We have reached peak GOS (Grandma Operating System). Most recent example is TLS 1.0 sites. Warn but Allow things to keep working.

vortico 6y ago

Has someone made a JS/WebAssembly implementation of Flash in order to allow Flash games to be played?

m3at 6y ago
Yes: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle

m3at 6y ago

I wonder why none of the top comments mention Ruffle[1]? It's a wasm flash player emulator, and it provide the necessary sandboxing. That sounds to me like a reasonable alternative to a buggy and now unsupported official player. [1] https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/

ineedasername 6y ago

Some of my kids' distance learning materials are built in Flash. Less than it was in the Spring, so it seems publishers are scrambling to resolve the issue, but it should make distance learning even more "interesting" in the next few months.

nn3 6y ago

So what's the recommended way of still playing old Flash games you have a local copy of? I'm very fond of some of the older Amanita games, such as Machinarium

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Use Adobe's Flash Projector. It runs swf files directly, outside of a browser.

chipsa 6y ago

I'm a little surprised no one has mentioned CheerpX[0] in this thread. It's supposed to run any Flash file flawlessly, because it's running the Flash runtime. Just through a x86 emulator in WASM, so it re-sandboxes everything. [0]: https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpxflash.html https://www.leaningtech.com/pages/cheerpxflash.html