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The best feature of flash was that it was so easy to disable. Because 99% of the use was annoying ads that pinned your cpu at 100%.

And that was Jobs argument, that it was too resource intensive. Predictably though, now that annoying crap moved to "newer" tech (javascript) and now we can't disable it as easily or without as little consequence. Just as resource intensive though...

Flash had many issues for sure, first and foremost security. But I can’t help but feel sad of what was lost since then. The Flash era produced some really unique experiences on the web.

And now were back with WebAssembly, WebGL, WebGPU, targeting 10+ year old graphic cards, without comparable easy of use tooling.

Those that think using Godot or Unity is the same, never did Flash games.

I wonder which one's more "Evil" Oracle or Adobe, it's surprising they didn't eat each other alive.

A well-established term of art dating to 1983:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug>.

Gold, but not new gold: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/heisenbug.html

I also learned this term pretty recently, loved it. Another fav tech term is automagically :-)

Fnord gold

Magical? Those are some rose tinted glasses. Having to install a binary blob from a free-software hostile vendor that wanted a monopoly to load a website was always ridiculous ask. Flash was a constant embarassment of RCEs vulns and virtually non-existent Linux support.

> Websites are still inferior to Flash of the early 2000s. It's taken decades and they can only mimic a fraction of its power.

Is this a troll? What could an application do with Flash in 2005 that we can't do with a modern web application today (excluding the obvious answer of runtime vulnerabilities that allowed apps to escape the sandbox)?

You'll get hammered for this on HN, but the web was magical and weird with Flash around, and now it feels quite vanilla and boring. I long for the days of weird experimental art and goofy animations and bonkers UIs.

Yeah but the execution still mattered. I'm a Flash / Shockwave fan as well but there's no point pretending that package was sufficient for the job it was pitched to do. Macromedia seemed to be on a really good track with Shockwave and Flash, but either didn't set up the technology for internet success, or really just sold out the goods with the Adobe acquisition.

In any case, take heart though. If we did it once, we can do it again.

What I never understand is why we never got a Flash-level authoring tool that exported to modern JavaScript/Canvas. Ruffle shows it can be done.

Adobe could have retuned Animate to do it, but instead let it languish as a niche animation tool for some animation studios to use before trying to kill it.

Those downvoting you have no idea of what you are talking about. Flash was what truly brought multimedia to the internet. You could make complex vector animations so easily in it, and it would only take a few minutes to load on a dialup or ISDN because of its small size (10's or 100's of KB). At one point, it used to power the whole of Youtube (and many other video sites). "Web applications" in this era actually meant something built with Flash. And it did all this on ancient hardware. Flash used to run on 90+ % of internet connected PCs at one point if I remember right. And because of that, you could count on Flash player more than the browsers they ran in. Adobe 100% screwed it up.

I would think:

1) macromedia ->

2) adobe ->

3) steve jobs

I think 2 was the root cause, not #1 or #3.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple...

That said, I wonder how easy it is to publish on apple? I think of xcode in sort of the same way sj complaining about adobe being cross-platform and slow.

You know you can use Ruffle if you really want Flash right?

https://ruffle.rs

But the only standard you need is WASM. All browsers support it. Use whatever you want to make it. In fact, Ruffle is just a WASM app.

this is unfortunately, the most revisionist take I can imagine. I don’t mean this in a personal way, mind you but while it may have been magical to publish interactive websites, using flash, that magic is utterly outweighed by the mundane vulnerabilities that flash was riddled with.

It’s safe to say we all miss sites like Homestar runner, and I had a co- worker who generated many meme – worthy flash presentations of his coworkers, which were hysterical. however, flash generated security vulnerabilities on the daily, and unfortunately, these vulnerabilities were very conveniently cross platform. These vulnerabilities, which Adobe couldn’t, or wouldn’t, resolve resulted in many many lost hours fixing virus – and Trojan horse – infested PCs, Macs, and cell phones. Adobe never managed to sandbox flash at all.

I miss a lot of old flash content, and I’m sure many people miss the ease with which you could create interactive content for websites. The fault here lies squarely on Adobe, who wouldn’t fix the situation.

Compared to the best that someone can vibe code? Not to show my age, but we were kids when flash came out. That copy of macro media? I don't know about you. We spent hours and hours and hours with that spend hours and hours and hours with vibecoding and tell me that you really can't accomplish similar shit. Then you just to deploy it you and I might be to smart to just paste your Vercel API key in ChatGPT, but pretend you're 16 right now.

I can tell you how much tsc sucks off the top of my head but what I can't do is tell you to hit ctrl+enter in Claude desktop to play movie.

What kids know today is how magical Claude desktop and ChatGPT are. The deploy story is trivial. just give the AI the key. We can judge someone for being dumb enough to do that, but unless you're selling consulting services, it's not nice to laugh. if you are selling consulting services then let's talk sales channels lol

> "Websites are still inferior to Flash of the early 2000s. It's taken decades and they can only mimic a fraction of its power. And none of its ease."

Somewhat mirrors my experience with all those rubbish non-PDF formats for digital document publishing, e. g. ePub: Often terminally ugly and utterly useless on top of it (not properly citeable, et cetera).

The last time I looked into this, readium lcp drm wasn't something US publishers were comfortable distributing their titles with, although it seems like this may be changing, which is good insofar as readium is at least open source and free to build with.

Sure thing. I've actually been working on the spoiler-free resource angle as well. I can book a call to talk. Distribution is the killer problem here though.

That’s really cool! I’ve been thinking about how LLMs could help me with long running series. I read lots of stuff that’s thousands of pages long with a huge cast of characters and locations. Amazons X-Ray is okay ish but (1) not supported everywhere and (2) amazon.

It would be really fun to have a progress-aware AI that can give me a quick definition of entities like people and places. The other thing that would help is details about fictional mechanics. How exactly does FTL work in this universe? What were all the cultivation stages? I don’t need help with reading comprehension, I need a better way to flip back through everything and surface the key detail that was mentioned one time 500 pages ago.

Also, unfortunately my library lives in Kindle. Help me get it out, at least the DRM free stuff. I also use Royal Road extensively and pay for that. Would be great to have those live serials supported somehow.

Shouldn't a CSS engine just ignore directives it doesn't know? At least it shouldn't fail without an error.

Are we blaming the spec and the author of the post for trying to conform to the checks, instead of blaming Adobe or Kobo for using 16-year old technology that ISN’T spec-compliant? -.-

> I love my Kobo (clara colour) and really, if they just removed the Adobe reader, it'd be perfect. And yes, I've tried KOreader, but never switched to it because I like my Overdrive library books and Kobo Store.

You may have already tried this, but they all work fine together. You can just exit the KOReader app and use the default Kobo stuff, then open KOReader again when you want to read something via that.

I have a PineNote but also (had a Remarkable 1 a while ago) a Remarkable2 and RM Pro. I also gifted a PocketBook Verse Pro and installed Koreader on it.

Basically if you want a "product" to use right now and still want to tinker, RM gives you ssh access to a system you can tinker with. RM2 has the best community support for now though.

PineNote works... but yes you will have to be ready to tinker. It's heavy and think but powerful, all the way to having a browser, audio, microSD, etc.

Meanwhile the PocketBook Verse Pro just works, no tinkering, but also tiny and not get for sketches IMHO.

I have a pine note. It lives up to that description. It's "fine", but I like to use it as an e ink laptop (well terminal with occasional other uses) with a bluetooth keyboard. I don't know that I would even want to start on using it as an ebook reader. It's bulky / heavy, and just doesn't match my kobo. I imagine asking it to do DRM ebooks would just be a non-starter.

I tried to turn a kobo into an eink terminal, and basically failed at getting it to the state I wanted it to be in, so the pine note is nice, but as a plug and play ereader it would be a hard sell for me.

> More expensive and less out-of-the-box software, but straight to the point on device ownership/what kind of software you can run, fewer strings attached.

This note was in the original comment, did you read it? The fact that it is $400 (more expensive) and has less out of the box software is literally mentioned to alert people to that.

> The Kobos don't limit what you can do with them either, you can sideload alternative e-reader software like KOReader that improves on the built-in reader functionality.

This is patently false, the latest Kobo Libra Color is using secure boot which completely locks out custom development:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=363175

So much so that QuillOS which used to be Kobo focused rewrote to support the PineNote

https://github.com/Quill-OS/quill

https://quill-os.org/

The point is to buy hardware that is built for you to freely modify and fully own, from the start.

My post was to make sure everyone knew the PineNote was an option, because I certainly did not know it until someone on HN made me aware.

Could you maybe make your point more concrete? Are you attempting to completely dissuade people from using the PineNote because it may not be easy to side load apps to it on hacker news?. Obviously different people have different propensities to do hacking, and some may not be able to afford the PineNote due to how expensive it is, but it's not clear what the goal of your comment was.

If your goal was "invest in Kobo instead of PineNote", I disagree with that. I'm not interested in investing (whether money or time) in an ecosystem that is just going to rug pull me eventually, over nickels and dimes.

BTW for those who agree, another great option is XTeink -- very hackable, and I've bought one myself:

https://www.xteink.com/

And there's a Linux phone out there which looks pretty encouraging too:

https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1splus/

Graphene is likely still the easier more polished option, but it's great to have options these days.

I saw that video a few days ago. It's really neat tech, but I'm curious what people are using the small external monitors for. I'm a big e-ink fan and really want to buy one because it's neat tech, but I can't come up with a use case where it makes sense for me. Any time I'm using a laptop on a desk, ideally I would want a larger monitor so I don't have to keep looking down (hurts your neck). If I'm lying down or on the couch, I would want a standalone device so I don't have to deal with the cords sticking out of the monitor or being tethered to a computer. I know portable e-ink displays have been a thing for nearly a decade at this point, so there must be a reason why people are buying them. If anyone reading this has one, what do you use it for?

Amazing! Do you know if anyone tried to run this on a Sage?

After getting that Kobo I realized that my hyper specific reading needs require a web browser with extension support (in particular support for Yomitan or similar dictionaries; the built-in dictionary functions on e-readers are awful for most non-English languages even with custom dictionaries, and KOReader isn't any better in that regard)

Wow, had no idea this existed, thanks for writing it and sharing it!

No worries, and thanks for your service -- people buying possibly-disappointing early devices definitely enables the newer devices to exist :)

I’m not in the EU so I have not, this is based on the technical changes mentioned, and what I’ve heard from people. Feel free to try if you are in the EU: kobo.com/update

> Wipro now manages and distributes any new updates, enhancements, bug fixes, and support requests directly

> Create your new ByteBooks ID using the same email address that you used for Adobe ID

Seems sold mostly.

'transitioned'

People making shows for TV had to respect the TV ”safe area”: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Safe_area_(televi...>

Quoted from here:

https://informatecdigital.com/en/Send-to-Kindle%3A-all-ways-...

"This service is free and works with both Kindle devices such as with the Kindle appIt also automatically converts many files to Amazon's internal format (such as AZW3 or KFX), as long as you respect its supported file types and size limits."

Read: requires internet connectivity to put documents on your Kindle. Depends on Amazons 'blessing'. Ends when Amazon ends support for your device. Is limited to whatever document formats (and sizes) Amazon decides to support. Internal formats on your Kindle may be DRM locked. Amazon could snoop any document transferred through that service. Could be turned into a paid service @ some point. Amazon could effectively brick your device if so desired.

(please correct if I misunderstand any of the above)

Sure, this may work for many users & they may be happy with that arrangement. But it's quite a few drawbacks. And the "planned obsolesence" smell is strong here. Me... I'll pass.

Technically you already have need of another format, because Kindles don't support epub, and your books get converted before the transfer.

I just don't get it when the title changes to something uninteresting. It wasn't click-bait before, but now it's almost meaningless.

Thanks, I had no idea, these look great!

The latter seems like what the tool's users actually want. That it's a harder problem doesn't change that.

It's probably too annoying for most, but I had a similar problem with KoReader and library books because those too depend on DRM. I ended up keeping KoReader as an app, then just not loading the app when I was reading a library book. It wasn't too bad.

KoReader also gave me a lot of freedom to manage the bad battery life of my Kobo Sage before it died of other causes. Definitely worth the extra cognitive load of dealing with the two experiences.

Search around, there's surely a way to break the drm. When theres no better way that's what I do too: pay for the book, convert to plain epub.

The publishing industry never got its head out of... some dark place. We've been able to buy mp3s without drm for ages, but somehow books are different.

So if I understand correctly a struggling epub viewer or ADE should skip css that it considers malformed - which means the reason my viewers have considered a epub to be not able to be viewed / corrupt / whatever it is for some other reason than more recent / current css implementation.

PDFs certainly can suck, more often those that will only work with abode's software and other viewers I've tried can not.

The lovecraftian horror of pdf mostly comes into play through the sheer amount of software that supply almost correct pdf. It's not enough to be able to read pdf anymore, you also have to be able to deal with software that emits subtly wrong documents.

I'm aware thanks. Mostly it's just my preferred viewer is older than css4 but it's been nice to find out why that was the case.

PDFs can be painful as well, more often it's then using abode's pdf viewer, but it's far less common for me. There was a time many years ago when I understood PDF structures better, back when I chose to manually edit and fix a couple of malformed PDFs.

I was floored to discover this recently when I clicked "edit" in calibre for the first time a few weeks ago.

Straight HTML, edit anything everywhere. Super slick.

Building a robust annotation system for both PDF and EPUB is a tough technical challenge, but definitely needed. I've been working in a similar space and recently open-sourced it. It's a local-first 3D library for organizing and reading EPUBs and PDFs directly in the browser. It's called KoreShelf on Github