Goodbye, Flash

You may have noticed for a while now that Adobe has blocked Flash content from working on your computers and devices, that’s because Flash has officially been retired. Adobe stopped supporting Flash on December 31st and as of Tuesday (Jan 12, 2021) it’s blocking all Flash content. Adobe is suggesting users uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems as there will be no more security patches moving forward. You’ll find instructions on how to do this, as well as the reasoning behind it here.

Basically, Flash had been on the chopping block since 2017 as it was no longer as frequently used and was being phased out across major web browsers. While the retirement has mainly been a minor inconvenience, it posed a real problem for some people, particularly in the city of Dalian in China — that’s because they were using Flash to run their railroad system!

Slashdot reports commuters were late to work at first but the railroad’s technicians were able to get back up and running using a knockoff version of Flash.