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…

Curiosity rover spots signs of ancient megafloods on Mars

We already know that Gale Crater on Mars used to hold a lake or series of lakes a few billion years ago. Now, NASA’s Curiosity rover has found evidence for ancient giant floods that washed through the region as well. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/megafloods-gale-crater-mars-life-curiosity-rover…

Flash Animations Live Forever At the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is now emulating Flash animations, games and toys in our software collection. Jason Scott writes in a blog post: Utilizing an in-development Flash emulator called Ruffle, we have added Flash support to the Internet Archive’s Emularity system, letting a subset of Flash items play in the browser as if you had a Flash plugin installed. While Ruffle’s compatibility…

Firefox 83 Arrives With HTTPS-Only Mode and Faster Performance

Mozilla today launched Firefox 83 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. An anonymous reader shares a report: Firefox 83’s highlight feature is HTTPS-Only Mode, in which the browser attempts to establish fully secure connections to every website (just like the EFF’s HTTPS Everywhere). If it can’t, Firefox asks for your permission before connecting to a website that doesn’t support secure connections. To…

Another Cryptocurrency Heist, This Time $2 Million Stolen from Akropolis

$2 million worth of Dai was stolen Thursday from the cryptocurrency borrowing/lending service Akropolis, reports ZDNet — after which the service’s admins paused all transactions. These attacks have been growing in numbers since early February this year, and one of the biggest flash loan attacks took place last month, in October, when hackers stole $24 million worth of cryptocurrency assets from…

In Rural ‘Dead Zones,’ School Comes On a Flash Drive

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Shekinah and Orlandria Lennon were sitting at their kitchen table this fall, taking online classes, when video of their teachers and fellow students suddenly froze on their laptop screens. The wireless antenna on the roof had stopped working, and it could not be fixed. Desperate for a solution, their mother…

Satellites with flashing LEDs could help avoid catastrophic collisions

It’s difficult to keep track of satellites in Earth’s orbit and avoid collisions – making them flash dimly should help, without interfering with astronomical work Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2259837-satellites-with-flashing-leds-could-help-avoid-catastrophic-collisions/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

SSDs Are Primed To Get Bigger and Faster With Micron’s New NAND Memory Tech

Micron has announced it’s shipping 176-layer TLC NAND flash memory to customers, a move that portends larger, faster and even cheaper SSD drives for all. From a report: The company said its 5th-gen 3D NAND memory should put its density about 40 percent higher than its nearest competitors, which are using 128-layer NAND. Micron said read and write latencies are reduced…