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Software

Adobe Releases the Last Flash Update Ever (theverge.com) 57

Posted by BeauHD from the for-real-this-time dept.
Adobe has released the final scheduled update to its Flash Player plugin, weeks before Flash's official retirement. The Verge reports: As noted on Adobe's site, yesterday marked the last update for Flash outside mainland China, which has a separate version of the software. Adobe will stop supporting Flash on December 31st, 2020, and it will block Flash content from running on January 12th, 2021. Adobe offered a brief farewell in its release notes. "We want to take a moment to thank all of our customers and developers who have used and created amazing Flash Player content over the last two decades," the note says. "We are proud that Flash had a crucial role in evolving web content across animation, interactivity, audio, and video. We are excited to help lead the next era of digital experiences."
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Adobe Releases the Last Flash Update Ever More

Adobe Releases the Last Flash Update Ever

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  • AAA AAAA (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:55PM (#60814112)
    Savior of the universe!

  • exploits incoming! (Score:5, Funny)

    by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @08:06PM (#60814134)
    Last update yesterday. So should be around 20 new vulnerabilities by now!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      More insightful than funny. If I had any Flash zero days I'd wait until they issue the last ever update before unleashing them.

  • First, but outdated. (Score:3)

    by The New Guy 2.0 ( 3497907 ) on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @08:07PM (#60814138)

    Most of the things Flash used to do such as play video have been taken up by HTML5... goodbye buggy platform, hello browser standard.

  • That website was where it all started for me. Devil doll, Star Wars gangsta rap, and creating low riders for hours.

  • I felt a great disturbance in the Force (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @08:11PM (#60814150)
    As if millions of geeks cried out in joy, and kept right on cheering.

  • More than just animations and games (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Torin Darkflight ( 851576 ) on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @08:24PM (#60814194)
    First off, despite the problems I personally will be facing from not being able to run Flash content (discussed in the next paragraph), I want to say good riddance, it's about time Flash finally got the axe. It long outlived its welcome nearly a decade ago, but I imagine legacy apps are likely what kept it going past its prime. And thus we get into the "problems I personally will be facing". I have a NAS that's approximately ten years old. Ancient in tech terms, yes...but, it's still working perfectly fine and meeting my current needs. The problem is, the entire administrative UI...the ENTIRE UI...runs in Flash. Once Flash is totally killed, I will lose any ability to manage that NAS. I'm sure I'm not the only one who will face the sudden death of necessary functionality once Flash is completely done for, so there is going to be a bit of an adjustment period for those still using legacy Flash material. Still, I'll reiterate what I said at first...despite the problems it is going to cause me, I am still glad to finally see Flash go.

    • If that NAS is running on such old software, there wre probably numerous unpatched vulnerabilities. Just set up an old PC that is properly patched OS wise as a storage server.

    • Long past time for a new NAS. Whatever relatively small amount of data it holds would be safer on new hardware irrespective of Flash.

    • Get your hands on an offline version of Flash, then use a computer with rolled back clock and you should be good.

      And file a class action against Adobe for willfully destroying your equipment.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by micheas ( 231635 )
      I'd probably download gnash to manage that gnash. Although I'm not sure which browsers still support the old-style plugins.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shess ( 31691 )

      And thus we get into the "problems I personally will be facing". I have a NAS that's approximately ten years old. Ancient in tech terms, yes...but, it's still working perfectly fine and meeting my current needs. The problem is, the entire administrative UI...the ENTIRE UI...runs in Flash.

      I get that this is preachy, but a NAS having a UI written in Flash would have been a deal-breaker for me. Usually for me, it was things like my employer's captive stock-plan-broker having their site written in Flash, and the problem wasn't some esoteric "Flash is bad" type problems, the problem was that Flash was an unnecessary component of the solution so it made me question whether they were trustworthy with all the other stuff behind the UI.

      I can KIND of see Flash for online games and the like, but for

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        It's likely the console was contracted out. The guys who can write device drivers don't tend to be the same people who can write a decent user interface.

  • When will the patch for that update get released?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )

      The permanent fix to all past and future Flash vulnerabilities was released in the last update. I wasn't even aware I still had Flash installed until the last update about 3 months ago popped up a warning that Flash would soon be unsupported and should be uninstalled.

      • Ah yea I'm going to have to have your nerd card back we will be letting you go today ... didn't know flash was installed.

  • I'm not gonna hold my breath.

  • Flash is finally out of beta, and the war for geek hearts and minds rages on.

  • Why do they have a different version of the software? How is it different? When will it be retired?
  • ..No, really!

  • If you have old ESXI UP DATE NOW CEO bonus be dammed

  • .. had to regularly remove the "Ask" toolbar from relatives' PC's because Adobe had pushed it with a Flash update, with an opt-in default.

    Mum: I hate this thing in my google, how did I get it?
    Me: You accepted an update without checking what you were clicking.
    Mum: That's very annoying
    Me: Yes

    Repeat every six months for about ten years. I think it finally ended in about 2016.

    I made a point of never having Adobe software of any kind on my PC, and never will.

  • Too bad there was/is no alternative (Score:3, Interesting)

    by diffract ( 7165501 ) on Thursday December 10, 2020 @01:05AM (#60814818)
    I used Flash back in the day to create animations for a personal website. I was later happy and sad that Flash was being phased out. Happy because my browsers won't glitch as badly, but sad there is no front-end alternatives. Adobe Flash wasn't just a plugin, it was a nice GUI animations and app-development kit. I couldn't find anything like it for the replacements. Not everyone wants to animate with text-based programming languages (especially when they have to learn so many of them). I imagine others like me straight-up abandoned web animations for this reason. I still don't know if there is a graphical web-animation/development kit like Adobe Flash, but that should've been available before the Flash plugin was being buried for the hopes it will die.
  • It only matters from a security standpoint, but it's not like we'll get rid of annoying animated / interactive web "pages" and zombie super-cookies, because they are implemented through html5 now, and we can't even block them.

  • Flash was never the problem (Score:3)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Thursday December 10, 2020 @04:06AM (#60815048)
    These days HTML + Canvas + Web Audio does what Flash did. So Flash is obsolete. It also allows the browser to manage security and throttle tabs, e.g. by frame limiting them when they're not visible.

    But Flash gained an undue reputation in its day. The problem was not flash per se but websites decorated with Flash based ads, and then browsers with multiple tabs on top with no throttling controls. Dozens of Flash plugins quickly dragged a computer to its knees but the same would have been true even if the same functionality were in HTML.

    One unintended but positive side effect of the ad industry's penchant for CPU sapping annoying ads was the birth of the ad blocker. So at least something positive came of it.

    • About the only thing I'll miss are those flash videos that were all the rage (like "George Washington", "End of the world", "The Ultimate Showdown", "Badger Badger Badger"). They are available on Youtube, but they're at such a low quality/bitrate that it makes me miss the original flash versions.

  • Has the memory leak been fixed yet?

  • Don't want to cause an infection. (Score:3)

    by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Thursday December 10, 2020 @05:55AM (#60815184)

    Watching Adobe patch Flash at this point, is like watching someone sanitize the skin of a convicted mass murderer with an alcohol swab, right before a lethal injection.

    • That's actually for liability reasons. If the guy gets pardoned at the literal last second you don't want a malpractice lawsuit.

      • That's actually for liability reasons. If the guy gets pardoned at the literal last second you don't want a malpractice lawsuit.

        Speaking of literal last seconds, if you've "infected" someone with a dirty lethal injection, you've probably got bigger things to worry about...

  • Will this thing never die? Stop fixing it and prolonging its existence. Give it the head shot already.

  • So how will I view zombo.com [zombo.com] now?

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