8 years ago
52
Flash. Must. Die.
Flash is officially more trouble than it’s worth. Here's how you can kill it now.
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https://www.wired.com
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What did Barry Allen ever do to you?
I hate him. Not him now. Him years from now. We're enemies, rivals, opposites, reverses of one another … neither of us was strong enough to defeat the other, until I learned his secret. I learned his name.
You're a Rick & Morty fan, I see! n___n
Definitely! Although I'm an even bigger fan of hyper-intelligent dogs bent on global takeover of the human race.
IT WAS ME BARRY! I WAS ADOBE!
I can't express how obnoxious Flash on Ubuntu is. I WANT to update the damn thing but for some reason the plug in on Firefox and the flash installer I attempt to use don't always align. Also the Flash website has done the bare minimum for Ubuntu users and the "APT Url" method is easily the worst way to provide the latest content while also being absurdly buggy itself.
Last time I checked, if you try Linux Mint it won't be as annoying but maybe it would be best to get rid of all of it for good.
Second this, I keep sticking with Firefox but it is perpetually blocking Flash.
Before I knew the back story, earlier this week I asked Ubuntu to update Flash..Then two days later, Flash went down again I found out the back story.. Yeah,it's ugly.
It is. I'm just glad it's on its way out, albeit slowly.
Given the level of security flaws in Flash, I'm not surprised by the pushback against it. Using flash in code these days is a bit like trying to make smartphone games with assembly. There's better, more efficient ways to go about it.
That, and I swear Flash upgrades are designed to foist unwanted software on the unobservant. If you're not paying attention, you'll get different browsers, or anti-virus software, or gods-forbid, toolbars added on. Shudder
I remember in the late nineties, I was sitting on a Unix workstation using Netscape, and there was no flash available on any of those platforms (I think this was a DEC Alpha system). Some website arrogantly stated: "Since Flash now is standard -everywhere- you must install flash to view this page". When I finally got to see the webpage, it was a picture of a skull half way submerged underwater where you could see the reflection of the skull in the water moving with the waves. Flash was trashy even back then.
It doesn't help the fact that microsoft is bundling flash with windows 8 and 10. If you're serious about getting rid of Flash, let Microsoft knows you don't want it.
Yay MS... Sell out by pre-installing Kandy-Krush-Kingdom because you know, we all like that crap... oh but it only runs on Flash and the whole world just disabled Flash. Don't worry about that, we have you covered. We have bundled Flash with Windows.
I wish the same would be said about QuickTime. Every year I uninstall it, but I always stumble upon websites still using it (mostly news websites I believe) and have to reinstall to view the content.
That and Silverlight. Installing Silverlight on a Mac isn't as bad as it once was, but seriously, HTML5 video ...
If anyone wants to watch Twitch without flash, here is a good Tutorial
Thanks. Twitch is the only thing that would have kept me from disabling flash.
I didn't think about it until it was already deleted, which was bad planning. But I found this neat tutorial and realised that the Livestreamer and VLC combo works like a charm! Spread the word
Great, so now I have to decide between ditching flash or completely cutting my only monetary contribution to streamers. I think I'll hang onto Flash for a bit longer. :/ Livestreamer is kind of a hassle anyway. It hasn't worked for me before.
No, Ditch flash. If the Livestreamers start losing out because Twitch doesn't want to go 100% HTML5, then they should be the ones to protest and push Twitch to upgrade their service for the sake of their viewers. Viewers don't have a voice, but Streamers do. Streamers can be influenced by Viewers. You're not hurting the Streamers if you are trying to protect yourself. Streamers will understand, if they don't, they probably are not worth watching/supporting.
Maybe for major streamers, but I watch the nobodies that just barely have gotten a subscriber button and Twitch would absolutely not care if they were gone. I'd only be hurting guys who are doing this for fun or are just starting to make it a career and I feel like it's wrong to punish them for something they can't control.
I'm honestly not even sure what exactly is the problem with Flash. Every article I've read gives a bunch of panic warnings, but doesn't give any information on what the vulnerabilities actually are or how hackers could use that information.
Minor streamers you can follow from the GUI. And they will still get the view that they need in order to grow. It is a good thing that they are not specifically pointing out the weaknesses of flash, in order to minimize usage of said weakness. You do what you feel is best, but Flash is bound to die sooner rather than later.
I completely agree.
It is not really a hassle to install it as long as you have VLC installed in the standard path. Run the Livestreamer installer, then launch the twitch GUI and you're all set! :) Consider buying subscription to a live streamer you like in order to support them. The most important thing is to get rid of flash.
I guess I should also consider having money too. Ads are the only way a person like me can support streamers.
Honestly, what actually is the problem with Flash? Every article I've ever read just throws around buzzwords about vulnerability and stealing information without giving any indication of how it is done or what actually is the risk.
If it's only from browsing random potentially dangerous sites, then there's absolutely no reason to get rid of it for me since I don't go on random websites.
A lot of Facebook games use Flash, and there goes their revenue when Flash is banned.
And nothing of value was lost.
King stocks plummet!
A lot also use html5 canvas tech, and unity. There's plenty of options, and given Facebook preference to the js html5 part of things, they are fixing it themselves. Seriusly, Facebook provides way more api access to javascript than anything else
By the way, Flash is blocked entirely on the latest version of Firefox. It's now click-to-play. You can enable it on websites just this once, or forever.
Just disabled it on both Firefox and Chrome to see what doesn't work on Fedora 22.
Everything seems ok so far. Hulu doesn't work but I use a chromecast so no loss there.
The sooner Flash is killed, the better. About a year ago I decided to not enable Flash by default (only click to activate) and I instantly noticed how many sites loaded faster and more importantly noticed sites that use Flash cookies (those I never allow). I mean seriously what's wrong with using regular cookies?
It seems a little too strong in feeling. I don't doubt that it's time has come and gone. With the advent of AIR and especially HTML5, it seems to have outlived its usefulness, but this level of anger seems misplaced. I guess I'm used to the somewhat more detached Lifehacker writing. But Wired has always been too gung ho about everything it discusses, which is why I stopped reading it quite a while ago.
Agree. I can get behind the technical reasons not to use flash, but the religious crusade is a bit over the top IMO.
Oddly enough Firefox is telling me that there is flash on this site.
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If you go out of you way to kill it, will it affect you when you want to watch Youtube videos? Sorry for the dumb question.
Probably not, I think YouTube has already gone html5. I'm not sure if it works on every video yet but it's been underway for a while now.
Youtube switched to html5 a while back
You can switch to the HTML5 player by going here. (Of course, you have to have cookies on so that it can remember your preference.)
I would love to see Flash disappear. I've uninstalled it myself months ago. It is sad that Flash found such a foothold on the web so that technology could progress during the era of the stagnant Internet Explorer, opening up so many vulnerabilities and causing inconvenience to users. The web should be based on open standards and accessible from all kinds of devices.
Look at a majority of browser based exploits and you see a very common attack vector, a plugin. Use browsers a-la-natural.
I can't find anything online, but I swear RES was used a while back to launch a DDoS due to some sort of bad handling with Imgur content. I could be wrong, it might have been something else, but my memory is telling me that it happened. Even NoScript had vulnerabilities recently.
Plugins that help you might be your downfall, most require you to allow them to see all content, and they might be helpful now, but down the track they can start injecting content without permission for profit.
I don't feel the hate. But, I always prefer a cleaner, preferably native way to do things and HTML 5 is more of that than Flash.
Hmmm... Eventually, Flash will die. However, we need to determine a plan as what to do with all of the years worth of flash content that has been published over the last few years. IMO, we can't just abandon them.
I have made a website and it used to have many flash pieces, but I have discarded as many of them as possible for mobile usage, but there are still stuff from Livestream and Radionomy that is still Flash. If I could find HTML5 replacements for them, they too can be ditched.
I'd love to see flash gone but alas, I use Spotify and sometimes play games on Kongregate. Both these need flash sadly.
I am ready for flash to die. I have now turned it off in my browser and I will see if I can enjoy most of the web without it.
You can. I deleted flash years ago, but had Chrome as backup as it comes bundled with flash. I've noticed that the last few years it's just a few video sites that doesn't work, but usually it will show me the video just fine if I switch user-agent to iPad ... These days I only open Chrome if there's a game I want to play.