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> Flash was riddled with problems - it was a resource hog, the macOS implementation was buggy and slow and Adobe seemed to not care about fixing these problems,

> Flash was riddled with problems - it was a resource hog, the macOS implementation was buggy and slow and Adobe seemed to not care about fixing these problems, and it had a very bad record of security holes Yeah, see this? This "riddled" word? That's how I know you're just repeating what you read. It's a tell. Jobs + Wired + Gawker + Apple made an incredibly strong conceptual gravity well that makes conversation about this difficult. They all use this "riddled with security holes" phrasing. It's like you just repeated "No, you don't understand. Brawndo is what plants crave." What security holes? Specifically? Were they more serious than any browser?

andrewxdiamond 5y ago
https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-53/product_id-6761/Adobe-Flash-Player.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-53/p...
- pverghese 5y ago
  https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-49/product_id-2935/Apple-Safari.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-49/p...
- rendall 5y ago
  During this conversation, someone inevitably posts this without comment, as if it is a rhetorical slam-dunk. Could you expand on this? Your point is the Flash had vulnerabilities? What software doesn't? https://www.cvedetails.com/product-list/vendor_id-1224/Google.html https://www.cvedetails.com/product-list/vendor_id-1224/Googl... Remember, Jobs' contention was that Flash's problems were inherent. Can you support that?
  - hluska 5y ago
    So, you will ask for citations and then rip them apart because “every piece of software is vulnerable”?? If you don’t like what you get, why did you ask for it? At first, you were merely overly aggressive. But this is turning into bullying.
  - gmueckl 5y ago
    Compare Flash to Safari then: Flash is a comparatively small VM runtime and vector graphics engine while Safari is a whole browser, which has a much larger attack surface. And Safari, despite its increased complexity, had about the same amount of reported vulnerabilities around 2010: https://www.cvedetails.com/product/2935/Apple-Safari.html?vendor_id=49 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/2935/Apple-Safari.html?ve... So, objectively, Flash did have very persistent security issues.
    - rendall 5y ago
      "Comparatively small" is doing a lot of lifting, there. What about Flash was "comparatively small" compared with Safari, and why does that let Safari of the hook for its vulnerabilities compared with Flash?
      - bjoli 5y ago
        I spelunked through the Firefox source code about 10 years ago. A modern browser is an amazingly complex piece of software. A gazillion parsers with the ability to handle malformed content that should give anyone nightmares. Multiple JITs and interpreters. Layout handling with incremental grid calculation algorithms that gave me vertigo - before I understood that it was done asynchronously. There is no way in hell flash is anywhere near as complex.
        rendall 5y ago
        Your "no way in hell" is not really an answer, and any response will just devolve into "Uh huh!" "Nuh uh!" Browsers now are very complex. At the time, we were still dealing with IE6 and JavaScript 3. Flash could do literally everything that browsers at the time did, and more. Load and display multimedia files, animate them, interpret ActionScript, and do it cross platform, cross browser, in a performant, relatively secure manner.
        bjoli 5y ago
        You compiled to flash. Content served that were run by the flash runtime were valid or didn't work at all. The amount of code dealing with malformed content in browsers is staggering. A browser deals with everything that flash did, but in more complex ways, while also doing a LOT more.
MayeulC 5y ago
Security issues? Yes, there were 0days after 0days. Adobe kept pushing updates, but users were often lagging behind. Researchers continually found new vulnerabilities. Browsers weren't as sandboxed and hardened as they are today, and flash plugged directly into them. Flash was one of the most used vectors for adware, all you had to do was visit some shady website.
- rendall 5y ago
  > 0days after 0days [Citation needed]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Deukhoofd 5y ago
    Here you go https://www.zero-day.cz/database/?set_filter=Y&arrFilter_pf%5BYEAR_FROM%5D=2006&arrFilter_pf%5BYEAR_TO%5D=2022&arrFilter_pf%5BSEARCH%5D=&arrFilter_pf%5BVENDORS%5D%5B%5D=6 https://www.zero-day.cz/database/?set_filter=Y&arrFilter_pf%...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - hluska 5y ago
      Good citation. :)
    - rendall 5y ago
      100% of all zero-day vulnerabilities from 2008-2022 are due to Adobe? Let's look at the entire context. https://www.zero-day.cz/database/?set_filter=Y&arrFilter_pf%5BYEAR_FROM%5D=2006&arrFilter_pf%5BYEAR_TO%5D=2022&arrFilter_pf%5BSEARCH%5D= https://www.zero-day.cz/database/?set_filter=Y&arrFilter_pf%...
      - Deukhoofd 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hluska 5y ago
Riddled is a common word that native English speakers tend to use. It’s not a tell. Your aggression, on the other hand, is uncommon. It is a tell.
- rendall 5y ago
  Sorry. Not intending to be aggressive. That's me being weirded out, not intentionally aggressive. As a native English speaker, I can assure you it's not a common technical term at all. It's a poetic phrase, designed to elicit thoughts of illness and damage. A house can be riddled with termites, a body can be riddled with cancer, a bridge can be riddled with rust. But Flash, uniquely, is "riddled" with security holes. No one says that about Windows.
  - warble 5y ago
    As an engineer, I hear it used all the time in contexts outside of Flash. It's extremely common.
  - Ferrotin 5y ago
    Getting “riddled” specifically means to get holes put in you, as in with bullets. It’s a very fitting term for having lots of security holes.
  - hluska 5y ago
    Strange, I googled “windows riddled” (without quotes - try it). This was the first result: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/why-is-windows-10-riddled-with-so-many-bugs-and/36472c84-bb02-4f86-9520-c86f8a3fa604 https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/why-is... “Why is Windows 10 riddled with so many bugs and the updates make matters worse?” It’s likely time to admit that you’re wrong. Riddled is a word, the meaning fits and people use it to describe software.
arepublicadoceu 5y ago
> Jobs + Wired + Gawker + Apple made an incredibly strong conceptual gravity well that makes conversation about this difficult. I never, ever, read the Jobs manifesto against flash. Never cared to read any article about flash back in the day and I absolutely dreaded opening a website that used flash. It was a guaranteed loading times on my bad internet, followed and/or preceded by a notice saying that I needed to install this crapware or update it. Not to mention my numerous crashes directly related to an unresponsive flash application. But as you clearly wrote somewhere on this thread, this was probably due to me using windows and most flash devs using macOS. As someone who just learned about jobs hate to flash and never touched on a MacBook in his life. I’m extremely happy this technology belongs to the past.

andrewxdiamond 5y ago

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-53/product_id-6761/Adobe-Flash-Player.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-53/p...

pverghese 5y ago
https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-49/product_id-2935/Apple-Safari.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-49/p...
rendall 5y ago
During this conversation, someone inevitably posts this without comment, as if it is a rhetorical slam-dunk. Could you expand on this? Your point is the Flash had vulnerabilities? What software doesn't? https://www.cvedetails.com/product-list/vendor_id-1224/Google.html https://www.cvedetails.com/product-list/vendor_id-1224/Googl... Remember, Jobs' contention was that Flash's problems were inherent. Can you support that?
- hluska 5y ago
  So, you will ask for citations and then rip them apart because “every piece of software is vulnerable”?? If you don’t like what you get, why did you ask for it? At first, you were merely overly aggressive. But this is turning into bullying.
- gmueckl 5y ago
  Compare Flash to Safari then: Flash is a comparatively small VM runtime and vector graphics engine while Safari is a whole browser, which has a much larger attack surface. And Safari, despite its increased complexity, had about the same amount of reported vulnerabilities around 2010: https://www.cvedetails.com/product/2935/Apple-Safari.html?vendor_id=49 https://www.cvedetails.com/product/2935/Apple-Safari.html?ve... So, objectively, Flash did have very persistent security issues.
  - rendall 5y ago
    "Comparatively small" is doing a lot of lifting, there. What about Flash was "comparatively small" compared with Safari, and why does that let Safari of the hook for its vulnerabilities compared with Flash?
    - bjoli 5y ago
      I spelunked through the Firefox source code about 10 years ago. A modern browser is an amazingly complex piece of software. A gazillion parsers with the ability to handle malformed content that should give anyone nightmares. Multiple JITs and interpreters. Layout handling with incremental grid calculation algorithms that gave me vertigo - before I understood that it was done asynchronously. There is no way in hell flash is anywhere near as complex.
      - rendall 5y ago
        Your "no way in hell" is not really an answer, and any response will just devolve into "Uh huh!" "Nuh uh!" Browsers now are very complex. At the time, we were still dealing with IE6 and JavaScript 3. Flash could do literally everything that browsers at the time did, and more. Load and display multimedia files, animate them, interpret ActionScript, and do it cross platform, cross browser, in a performant, relatively secure manner.
        bjoli 5y ago
        You compiled to flash. Content served that were run by the flash runtime were valid or didn't work at all. The amount of code dealing with malformed content in browsers is staggering. A browser deals with everything that flash did, but in more complex ways, while also doing a LOT more.

MayeulC 5y ago

Security issues? Yes, there were 0days after 0days. Adobe kept pushing updates, but users were often lagging behind. Researchers continually found new vulnerabilities. Browsers weren't as sandboxed and hardened as they are today, and flash plugged directly into them. Flash was one of the most used vectors for adware, all you had to do was visit some shady website.

rendall 5y ago
> 0days after 0days [Citation needed]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Deukhoofd 5y ago
  Here you go https://www.zero-day.cz/database/?set_filter=Y&arrFilter_pf%5BYEAR_FROM%5D=2006&arrFilter_pf%5BYEAR_TO%5D=2022&arrFilter_pf%5BSEARCH%5D=&arrFilter_pf%5BVENDORS%5D%5B%5D=6 https://www.zero-day.cz/database/?set_filter=Y&arrFilter_pf%...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - hluska 5y ago
    Good citation. :)
  - rendall 5y ago
    100% of all zero-day vulnerabilities from 2008-2022 are due to Adobe? Let's look at the entire context. https://www.zero-day.cz/database/?set_filter=Y&arrFilter_pf%5BYEAR_FROM%5D=2006&arrFilter_pf%5BYEAR_TO%5D=2022&arrFilter_pf%5BSEARCH%5D= https://www.zero-day.cz/database/?set_filter=Y&arrFilter_pf%...
    - Deukhoofd 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hluska 5y ago

Riddled is a common word that native English speakers tend to use. It’s not a tell. Your aggression, on the other hand, is uncommon. It is a tell.

rendall 5y ago
Sorry. Not intending to be aggressive. That's me being weirded out, not intentionally aggressive. As a native English speaker, I can assure you it's not a common technical term at all. It's a poetic phrase, designed to elicit thoughts of illness and damage. A house can be riddled with termites, a body can be riddled with cancer, a bridge can be riddled with rust. But Flash, uniquely, is "riddled" with security holes. No one says that about Windows.
- warble 5y ago
  As an engineer, I hear it used all the time in contexts outside of Flash. It's extremely common.
- Ferrotin 5y ago
  Getting “riddled” specifically means to get holes put in you, as in with bullets. It’s a very fitting term for having lots of security holes.
- hluska 5y ago
  Strange, I googled “windows riddled” (without quotes - try it). This was the first result: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/why-is-windows-10-riddled-with-so-many-bugs-and/36472c84-bb02-4f86-9520-c86f8a3fa604 https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/why-is... “Why is Windows 10 riddled with so many bugs and the updates make matters worse?” It’s likely time to admit that you’re wrong. Riddled is a word, the meaning fits and people use it to describe software.

arepublicadoceu 5y ago

> Jobs + Wired + Gawker + Apple made an incredibly strong conceptual gravity well that makes conversation about this difficult. I never, ever, read the Jobs manifesto against flash. Never cared to read any article about flash back in the day and I absolutely dreaded opening a website that used flash. It was a guaranteed loading times on my bad internet, followed and/or preceded by a notice saying that I needed to install this crapware or update it. Not to mention my numerous crashes directly related to an unresponsive flash application. But as you clearly wrote somewhere on this thread, this was probably due to me using windows and most flash devs using macOS. As someone who just learned about jobs hate to flash and never touched on a MacBook in his life. I’m extremely happy this technology belongs to the past.