[HN Gopher] Flash Player is about to stop working on Windows 10
___________________________________________________________________
Flash Player is about to stop working on Windows 10
Author : muhahue
Score : 100 points
Date : 2020-12-30 21:17 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.windowslatest.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.windowslatest.com)
| ourcat wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| They're ending it in January? Edge, Chrome and Chromium are set
| to drop support in january.
| ourcat wrote:
| 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...
| muhahue wrote:
| Right. They'll pull the plug with version 89 scheduled for
| January.
| tyingq wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.adob.
| ..
| underseacables wrote:
| Is there a way to keep flash going?
| unnouinceput wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway98908 wrote:
| I invite you guys to play some old flash games, for the last time
| on my 11 year old flash gaming website: boredmob.com
| kgwxd wrote:
| While millions of kids are doing remote learning? That seems like
| a terrible idea, there is tons of educational sites using flash.
| stretchcat wrote:
| The kids will be fine. It's their teachers who will need to do
| more work to find new resources and update their lesson plans.
| dasd2 wrote:
| newgrounds is known for hosting flash animations. They created
| their own flash player desktop app so you can keep watching
| content that was flash based :
| https://www.newgrounds.com/flash/player
| anthk wrote:
| Flash animations are easily converted into webm/mp4/mkv/put
| any video container here.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > for some unknown reasons
|
| ka-ching
|
| educational and government contracts need disruption and
| this is a symptom
| egypturnash wrote:
| 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.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| And the onus is on those educational sites to transition away
| from Flash. We knew for several YEARS it's being
| decommissioned.
|
| If these websites needed a disrupting event to nudge the
| transition, then this is it.
| mhh__ wrote:
| These educational sites are probably dead - writing
| educational material is exhausting and not free.
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| >Microsoft and Google are planning to disable Flash Player in
| their Chromium-based web browsers, but no official word has
| been given as to when this will happen.
|
| So you have two copies of flash on your Win10 computer. One is
| an OS library that you can see a bit of in the control panel.
| This is what Microsoft is removing with this update. The other
| is a containerized copy that Chrome and Edge ships with. That
| copy isn't going away until MS and Google say so, and if their
| metrics say there's a lot of flash use, then its going to stay
| for a while, maybe forever as a whitelist-only legacy
| technology. Its kinda this already, but I'm guessing it could
| be stricter, like forcing people to go deep into a menu to
| activate flash instead of helpfully popping up about it.
| skymt wrote:
| MS and Google have already said so. Flash will be blocked
| from loading in every version of Chrome next month, and the
| next version of Chrome to ship will remove all Flash support
| entirely from the codebase. Chromium-based Edge will follow
| suit.
|
| https://www.chromium.org/flash-roadmap#TOC-Upcoming-Changes
|
| https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/08/30/update-
| removi...
| wolco2 wrote:
| Is firefox safe from the purge?
| kaszanka wrote:
| No. Firefox will drop support for the Flash plugin with
| Firefox 85 (January 26, 2021), but there's a cutoff date
| of January 12, 2021 in the _plugin itself_ , after which
| it will not work even in earlier versions of Firefox.
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/end-support-adobe-
| flash
| spijdar wrote:
| Not sure how many people are still stuck with flash, though I
| wouldn't be surprised. Either way, while it'll suck, maybe a
| lot, if there are _businesses_ still selling /offering flash-
| based products, they need to change, immediately.
|
| I'm sympathetic to people who want to keep flash around to play
| games or experience the "old web", but education and enterprise
| still requiring flash for <x> is beyond absurd at this point,
| as long as it's been deprecated and Adobe has been ringing the
| death bell.
|
| Maybe this isn't a fair sentiment either, but I feel like both
| teachers and students would benefit from upgrading to a product
| that doesn't require flash. I know it's more complicated than
| that, but geeze.
| lazulicurio wrote:
| > Not sure how many people are still stuck with flash
|
| My mom is a school teachers and a lot of the web materials
| provided for their curriculum are still flash-based. Although
| the publishers have started to transition, the older flash
| apps tend to be richer in content and less buggy.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| They'll never stop using Flash until it's taken away from them,
| because there's no financial pressure upon them to invest in
| ongoing maintenance and upgrades otherwise.
|
| This is also going to break a massive chunk of the food permit
| and driver's ed markets overnight.
| duxup wrote:
| It's not like we didn't know it was going... whose
| responsibility is it then if some site continues to use it?
|
| It has been a LONG time we knew this was coming, anyone still
| using it, I don't know what could make them switch outside
| breaking changes.
| iso1210 wrote:
| I've got flash based devices in foreign offices that were due
| for upgrade or replacement this year, which has been.....
| shall we say challenging?
| r00fus wrote:
| None of my machines use flash nor do my 3 kids have flash-based
| apps.
|
| I'd like to know what these sites are...
| rvanmil wrote:
| Here you go: https://ambrasoft.nl/ambrasoft-school/
|
| It is utterly ridiculous, this company is still selling their
| Flash crap to primary schools. They are part of Noordhoff,
| the largest publisher of the education system in The
| Netherlands.
|
| My 4yo son has an iPad but for home schooling due to COVID we
| had to install Chrome with Flash and teach him how to work
| with that on a laptop.
| TwoBit wrote:
| Those sites have had 5-10 years' warning. Some things need to
| die and the benefit to everyone outweighs the needs of a few.
| If Flash wasn't killed then people keep writing for it.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It seems like you probably can't, but I think there's some
| emulators bring written.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| 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
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| There is no reason standalone Flash Projector should stop
| working too.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I never wanted it in the first place, I was always disappointed
| the browsers bundled it.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| 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.
| davio wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being a Y2K style
| surprise to some hopelessly inattentive VMWare customers
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| 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.
| egberts1 wrote:
| as an intermediate byte code vulnerability analyst, ActionScript
| sucks ... royally.
|
| good riddance.
| superkuh wrote:
| 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.
| listic wrote:
| Can one run Flash in Chromium on Linux, by the way? I have only
| been able to do it in Firefox.
| maya24 wrote:
| Do you have a TV? Do you have a Roku or other streaming box? Do
| you use a smartphone?
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| > Do you have a TV?
|
| No
|
| > Do you have a Roku or other streaming box?
|
| No
|
| > Do you use a smartphone?
|
| Yes, reluctantly.
| merrywhether wrote:
| 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.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| 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.
| waiseristy wrote:
| 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?
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| They already were using some sandboxing measures to control
| this. But Flash inherently involved native, proprietary code
| and it was difficult to secure completely, whereas modern
| WebExtensions are JS that is completely under the browser's
| security control.
| 1f60c wrote:
| I can't believe no one has mentioned Ruffle[0] yet.
|
| [0]: https://ruffle.rs/
| waiseristy wrote:
| Somebody further down in this posts comments did, it might
| have been paginated for you to the second page of comments
| hangonhn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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_u
| s...
| waiseristy wrote:
| 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?
| wolco2 wrote:
| A website with flash didn't mean the entire website was
| in flash, there was usually a mixing of html sometimes
| server side code. The browser is the best place view
| flash for those reasons.
|
| The browser is the only place for it.
| wil421 wrote:
| Apple wanted to kill flash because it was CPU intensive and
| Jobs hated it. They wanted the first iPhone(s) to have great
| battery life and the web was plagued by flash intros, games,
| and what not at that time.
|
| It didn't help it had a lot of security issues and it certainly
| helped its downfall. IMHO we are better without it and good
| riddance.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _Apple wanted to kill flash because it was CPU intensive
| and Jobs hated it. They wanted the first iPhone(s) to have
| great battery life and the web was plagued by flash intros,
| games, and what not at that time._
|
| But now the web is plagued by javascript doing the same,
| often even more intensively. Is it better or worse?
| outside1234 wrote:
| Better. JavaScript is a web standard.
| mhh__ wrote:
| And flash couldn't have been one?
|
| Edit: I was 9 when Jobs wrote his thing on Flash, so I
| appreciate the downvotes for asking a question?
| vondur wrote:
| Probably would not happen under Adobe.
| muldvarp wrote:
| Flash was proprietary, didn't have a specification and
| only one real implementation ever existed.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Flash was using actionscript which was ecma262-3/4 and I
| believe it helped ecmascript in the long term.
| eropple wrote:
| Could have? Sure, if some things broke the right way. Was
| gonna be? Not that I know of. Did? No.
| [deleted]
| egypturnash wrote:
| Browsers can attempt to improve Javascript performance
| because it's an open standard. And 2d rendering
| performance, and 3d rendering performance, and whatever
| else.
|
| The only people who could improve the Flash plugin's
| performance were the people at Adobe working on it. And,
| well, Adobe just doesn't give two shits about performance
| of _any_ of their tools unless they absolutely have to.
| TwoBit wrote:
| No, because JavaScript isn't nearly the bug factory that
| Flash was. Literally every month there was a new Flash full
| compromise bug, for multiple years.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Worse. You could use most websites with Flash disabled and
| get by fine. That's a lot more difficult with Javascript
| today.
|
| Flash had a much more arms-length relationship to the
| browser and wasn't able to be used as a surveillance tool
| as effectively as Javascript can be.
|
| The constrained nature of Flash made it less of a threat to
| an open and standards-based web than Javascript (and more
| broadly WASM).
|
| Edit: On the last point - Flash wasn't able to boot a
| virtual x86 in a browser. Obligatory reference:
| https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-
| death...
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| You can use most websites with javascript disabled just
| fine. In fact, it generally greatly improves your
| experience.
|
| Thanks to the ADA, American sites (or sites that do a lot
| of business with America) must work with assistive
| technologies, mainly web browsers designed for the blind.
| Most of those do not run js. So, you cannot design your
| website so that it doesn't work with js disabled, unless
| you are willing to expose yourself to massive legal
| liability. People used to ignore this a lot, but since
| _Domino's Pizza v. Guillermo Robles_ , most sites have
| been fixed so that they are usable without js.
|
| I strongly recommend getting ublock, blocking all js by
| default, and then whitelisting sites where it is
| required/useful. It's hard to overstate just how much
| better it makes browsing in general.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| You don't have to sell me. I've had Javascript disabled
| by default for a couple of years now. I love it. I'm a
| technical person. I can handle (and have the patience
| for) fidgeting with settings to get sites to work.
|
| My non-technical friends and family can't do that. Trying
| to impose that upon them would just frustrate them (and,
| for my family, increase tech support calls to me).
|
| All my banking and insurance sites are useless w/o
| Javascript. Squarespace sites, Twitter, Imgur, don't work
| worth a damn without Javascript. I just gave up and
| mostly gave Google properties a pass to get Youtube to
| work. (I don't use Gmail so I have no idea how bad it
| would be.)
|
| A site better be pretty damned compelling before it rises
| to the level of getting opened in an unconstrained
| browser setting. I just end up not opening a lot of stuff
| (or just closing it again when it lights-up "NoScript").
| wil421 wrote:
| Mildly better. Flash was more like Java applets than
| JavaScript. It was its own thing running in the browser.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I distinctly remember this and partially believe the growth
| of the iPhone accelerated the decline.
| [deleted]
| papito wrote:
| It's kind of funny how Jobs declared War on Flash, but it had
| to be done. It made the web back in the olden days much more
| interesting and even amazing, but it had to be killed off,
| for great justice and, look, it took over a decade.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| The adaption of web audio took forever, something that
| Flash did rather well: https://caniuse.com/audio-api
| 8note wrote:
| That's a generous interpretation vs Apple wanting a monopoly
| on deciding what apps can run on iphones
|
| Not supporting flash is the basis for the app store
| josephg wrote:
| The real problem wasn't flash games. It was flash banner ads.
|
| Lots of badly written flash content would (even on desktop)
| completely peg a CPU core. And it would do that even when the
| content wasn't visible (for background tabs, or if you'd
| scrolled past the ad).
|
| This is bad enough on desktop, worse on a laptop (where you
| care more about battery and thermals) but it was a disaster
| on the very low power phones we had at the time. It made the
| iphone's browser feel extremely janky and unresponsive, and
| your phone would warm up in your hand. People had no idea
| that the problem was that "punch the monkey" banner ad they
| had already scrolled past. The website operator didn't know
| what ads were being served. Everyone just had a bad time.
|
| Steve Jobs was asked about it in an interview once and he
| said he'd never seen flash managing to work smoothly on a
| mobile device. He said if Adobe could show it working well,
| he'd reconsider. But as far as I could tell, Adobe never rose
| to the challenge. I think android had flash working for
| awhile, but they eventually dropped it too. (Probably for the
| same reason.)
|
| On desktop, I remember having an option in chrome to make
| flash not play by default. That way flash banner ads just
| wouldn't get loaded. I imagine they could have done the same
| for mobile safari - but that sort of thing was never Apple's
| aesthetic.
| TwoBit wrote:
| And Flash was proprietary. And its behavior was opaque. And
| it didn't mesh at all with the rest of your browser/website
| experience, as it was an embedded thing.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| The makers of the browsers (Apple, Google, Microsoft)
| didn't want to optimize for someone else's (especially not
| Adobe, not even Unity3D, if anyone remembers that) plugin.
| So WHATG and W3C made their own 'html5 canvas' that didn't
| truly get official until 2014 (but was adopted earlier in
| browsers).
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20141106212543/http://www.cnet.
| c...
| canofbars wrote:
| I'm guessing flash sites were also horrible on a small touch
| screen. The simple act of having to rewrite most of the web
| without flash in a time where smartphones existed probably
| did a lot of good.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > I don't understand why the major browsers have just created
| some flash sandbox for these apps to run under
|
| They haven't done this. I don't know where you heard that? The
| whole point of the article is they're dropping Flash instead of
| doing this.
| waiseristy wrote:
| That would be a mis-spelling, apologies
| dunce2020 wrote:
| What options are available if I _want_ to keep it, security be
| damned?
| muhahue wrote:
| I installed the optional Windows Update and I am not able to
| reinstall Flash anymore.
| erk__ wrote:
| Depends what you want to use it for things like
| https://ruffle.rs/ is getting better all the time and works
| with quite a few games now.
| rasz wrote:
| RunAsDate.exe to the rescue
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Virtual windows XP machine?
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Why not win7?
| papito wrote:
| Look, man. There is an easy way, and there is the COOL way.
| refracture wrote:
| 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.
| userbinator wrote:
| 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...
| matsemann wrote:
| If they didn't, people would instead lament them how their OS
| is unsafe. Removing or disabling unsafe programs is a security
| feature, almost as if detecting malware.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| There are still ways of playing flash for those who truly need
| to.
|
| https://lightspark.github.io/
| voldacar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I should be the one to decide when my computer stops being
| able to do something it could already do. The default should
| be that I do nothing and my computer continues to be able to
| do what it already did.
|
| It's wrong every time I have to do something to allow my
| computer to continue doing something it already did. This is
| why I have to be exceedingly careful not to install updates
| on those dwindling platforms where I still have that control.
| I have no idea what features are going to be removed, and
| usually have no way to get them back. (Hello e-fuses in the
| Nintendo Switch, or Apple no longer signing old iOS releases
| to prevent downgrading.)
|
| We should not normalize the idea that third-parties can take
| away the capabilities of devices we own.
|
| Edit: I would go so far as to say that it should be illegal
| for a device manufacturer to prevent you from reinstalling
| any old firmware onto a device you own. (Yes, yes-- I know
| that we're getting into the whole "But that old device
| firmware has security bugs! Think of the Internet!"
| discussion. Liability, both for device manufacturers and for
| device owners, is a conversation we need to have too.)
| mlacks wrote:
| I think the problem is when someone isn't able to decide
| what's best for their computer - and then decides to blame
| the vendor.
|
| The vendor has already distributed the software with the QA
| done as thoroughly as possible/ practical, issued a TOS
| denying a warranty or any sort of protection from failure -
| that we all agreed to - and yet the litigation is
| inevitable if something happens to the end-user on account
| of a vulnerability in the software.
|
| Its not their computer, but in our litigation-happy
| cultural climate, its their responsibility. No one is
| preventing us from doing what we want with our computers
| with this flash issue - just reducing liability.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Devil's advocate- as long as that feature is there
| Microsoft has an obligation to support it. The feature has
| fallen out of use. Why should Microsoft be forced to
| support this forever?
|
| You're free to stop updating Windows right?
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| What does "support" mean? Let the feature continue
| working has it has. Sure. Yeah.
|
| Fix bugs? No. I'll pay for that if I want that. Software
| is a service.
|
| With Windows 10 I'm not free to stop updating Windows if
| I want a computer connected to the Internet. Microsoft
| does dirty tricks to make if very difficult for me from
| completely stopping the update treadmill. They've shown
| that it's an arms race, too. I can't possibly keep up
| with that opponent.
| tester756 wrote:
| As always unnecessary conspiracy theories
|
| >entirely to essentially reach into everyone's machines and
| delete what they don't want!
|
| I guess that's because Windows is used by all kind of people,
| even those who have literally 0 understanding of what's going
| on and there's nothing wrong with removing unsafe software that
| was dead >5 years ago for majority of people
| bitexploder wrote:
| I have increasingly felt alienated in my relationship with my
| computing devices. I started in the mid 90s with Linux and
| Win95 and you owned and could understand the whole computer.
| iOS and the trend of walled computing gardens were ostensibly
| done for security and user experience, but users have lost
| control of their devices. Not everyone needs that of course,
| but I t is a big reason I migrated to Linux this year after
| having an off again on again relationship with Linux on my
| primary computing device. macOS is good, but it used to be
| great. Way too many technologists are eating up things like M1
| / Apple silicon without asking if it's a good thing. It
| performs great, but does it really matter? I'm pretty sure it
| doesn't help me code or do things in emacs any more
| efficiently. After Apple hardware quality dropping a lot I just
| don't feel the experience is good enough to justify it anymore.
| Maybe M1 will be a big evolutionary step that we simply can't
| ignore, but I know I can do everything I need to for the next
| few years on my Linux laptop. I will evaluate again when it's
| EOL. Mid-2015 Mac was the last great MacBook IMO. It's been
| downhill from there. It's been a slow incremental decline in
| quality of both the hardware and the OS. And I really loves my
| Mac and Apple ecosystem a lot, but the writing is on the wall
| for these walled gardens. iOS is still solid and my iPhone 12
| is great... but it may be my last iPhone as well. Same with
| Windows, honestly. Win 7 was probably the last great windows
| operating system. Win10 has been very okay for me. All the
| forced reboots and telemetry in macOS and Windows... yuck.
| type0 wrote:
| It is yet another ominous warning about the dangers of
| proprietary software
| kungito wrote:
| Can't you install an older version of Windows (like 7 or XP) to
| use older deprecated software? At some point we need to let the
| old stuff dissappear from main branch
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| Doesn't that rapidly become impossible if you don't already
| have the installation media? Where would I get a
| (legitimate/safe) copy of Windows XP at this point?
| stretchcat wrote:
| An ominous warning that you no longer own your computer, or the
| inevitable consequence of you never owning this proprietary
| software in the first place?
| rcoveson wrote:
| My bias is definitely to agree with this sentiment, but I'm
| going to play devil's advocate:
|
| Windows 10 automatically updates itself, which is a reasonable
| thing for a consumer operating system to do. It happens to be a
| very "wide and deep" OS which includes a lot of userland stuff
| as part of the same release bundle, like OS X/macOS. There are
| FOSS projects that also operate this way. The GNOME environment
| comes to mind as a similarly "wide and deep" example. I myself
| have had the experience of having a GNOME feature I was using
| removed after an update. The recourse in that case isn't much
| different from the recourse in the Windows 10 Flash case. You
| can either live without the removed thing or find a third party
| solution. What you can't do is just stop updating the thing;
| you'd lose (community) support and important bug fixes.
|
| Of course, as long as it's FOSS you can just fork it, right?
| But really that's not the appropriate solution for cases like
| this. We're talking about the removal of a basically stand-
| alone feature. If the official bundle stops supporting that
| thing, forking the bundle is not the way forward. Bringing in a
| third party is.
|
| So the way I see it, both the problem and the solution here are
| the same for both Windows and large FOSS software bundles like
| GNOME. They're the opposite of narrow projects, so stuff is
| bound to get removed eventually. You can't stay on an old
| version, you shouldn't fork, and in some cases you probably
| shouldn't even protest, as the reasoning for removal may be
| sound.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| > What you can't do is just stop updating the thing
|
| That's the choice being argued. You should have that option.
| It's unreasonable to expect that old software will always be
| supported. There is a real cost to it. But as long as I still
| have the machine it should be my choice as to when it no
| longer does the things I need it to do (at least until the
| point of physical failure).
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This has been the case since Google Chrome. If you tolerated
| Chrome and it's "evergreen browser" behavior, you supported the
| process that eventually became software developers' assumption
| that they should update themselves without permission on their
| schedules, and retire and remove features with regularity.
|
| In 2020, we no longer have a right to act surprised about this,
| because we should've done something to fight it a long time
| ago.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| This is also how websites work.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I broke that functionality in Chrome so I could control when
| it updated. I didn't accept it. I won't accept it. I would
| encourage others not to accept it.
|
| I will abandon platforms that take away my control. That's
| not tenable for a lot of people. There's just a lot of "cool
| stuff" that I don't get to use if there isn't a Free
| solution. I deal with it. I hate it, but I deal with it.
| protoman3000 wrote:
| Imagine if OS vendors and Intel decided to attempt to install
| microcode updates that fix severe vulnerabilities on your
| machine and essentially reach into everyone's machines and
| delete what they don't want!
|
| The frog continues to boil slowly...
| Roritharr wrote:
| Imagine if the President told the NSA to remove every copy of
| a file. the pathway you've described would be potentially
| viable to reach a large majority of files in storage
| someplace.
|
| Terrifying thought.
| falcrist wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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-thoug...
| samizdis wrote:
| 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
|
| 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 )
| yenwodyah wrote:
| 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/)
| [deleted]
| cmehdy wrote:
| You could always use an older version of a browser for the
| specific purpose of playing those games. It's not great but it
| works (I have done that with an old version of Firefox for java
| web applets)
| Scarblac wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It's happening on January 12, not on Monday
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Does that mean I won't have to suffer through my crappy company
| interactive training videos?
| unnouinceput wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| No, you'll have to go back to IE under windows XP. Hopefully in
| a VM.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| A lot of the company garbage only works in IE as it is.
| Great.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-12-30 23:00 UTC)