Flash Version Distributed in China After EOL is Installing Adware

Although the Flash Player app formally reached its end of life on December 31, 2020, Adobe has allowed a local Chinese company to continue distributing Flash inside China, where the application still remains a large part of the local IT ecosystem and is broadly used across both the public and private sectors. From a report: Currently, this Chinese version of the…

Microsoft Starts Removing Flash From Windows Devices

Microsoft has begun deploying this week KB4577586, a Windows update that permanently removes the Adobe Flash Player software from Windows devices. From a report: The update was formally announced last year at the end of October when Microsoft and other browser makers were preparing for the impending Flash end-of-life, scheduled for the end of 2020. According to a support document published…

To Re-Enable Flash Support, South Africa’s Tax Agency Released Its Own Web Browser

“The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has released this week its own custom web browser,” reports ZDNet, “for the sole purpose of re-enabling Adobe Flash Player support, rather than port its existing website from using Flash to HTML-based web forms.” To prevent the app from continuing to be used in the real-world to the detriment of users and their security, Adobe…

Chrome 88 Released, Removing Adobe Flash — and FTP

Google released Chrome 88 this week — and besides improving its dark mode support, they removed support for both Adobe Flash and FTP. PC World calls it “the end of two eras.” The most noteworthy change in this update is what’s not included. Chrome 88 lays Adobe Flash and the FTP protocol to rest. RIP circa-2000 Internet. Neither comes as a…

Adobe Flash Is Officially Dead After 25 Years With Content Blocked Starting Today

When a user attempts to load a Flash game or content in a browser such as Chrome, the content now fails to load and instead displays a small banner that leads to the Flash end-of-life page on Adobe’s website. While this day has long been coming, with many browsers disabling Flash by default years ago, it is officially the end of…

Flash Is About To Die, But Classic Flash Games Will Live On

Fast Company’s technology editor harrymcc writes:
After years of growing technical irrelevance and security concerns, the Flash browser plug-in will reach the end of the road on January 12 when Adobe blocks its ability to display content. The web will survive just fine. But there’s a huge library of old Flash games — some of them quirky, interesting, and worth preserving. Over…

It’s Game Over For FarmVille, as Flash Also Buys the Farm

The last day of the year was also the last day for FarmVille, one of the original addictive Facebook games. From a report: FarmVille, which allowed players to cultivate colorful cartoonish farms by tending crops and caring for livestock, had 30 million daily players at its peak. But game developer Zynga announced in September it would shut down the game on…

Firefox 84 Claims Speed Boost from Apple Silicon, Vows to End Flash Support

The Verge reports: Firefox’s latest update brings native support for Macs that run on Apple’s Arm-based silicon, Mozilla announced on Tuesday. Mozilla claims that native Apple silicon support brings significant performance improvements: the browser apparently launches 2.5 times faster and web apps are twice as responsive than they were on the previous version of Firefox, which wasn’t native to Apple’s chips……

Adobe Releases the Last Flash Update Ever

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…

Ask Slashdot: Did You Upgrade To macOS Big Sur?

Yesterday, Apple released the latest version of macOS: macOS Big Sur (also known as macOS 11.0) and the rollout was anything but smooth. Many users have complained about Apple services such as iMessage, or even Apple Pay, not working for them. Personally, my 5K iMac (2013), which isn’t even compatible with Big Sur, ground to a halt yesterday, as I was…