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Comment by programmernews3 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is the long tail of sites or site features that don't work without flash and users who rely on those sites or site features.

I've heard Facebook video and last.fm streaming don't work without Flash for eg.

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Tidal and Deezer are others which require flash. Both have desktop apps, however.. Tidal's desktop app is awful and laggy to the extent I prefer using the web interface; Deezer's Windows app lacks some features compared to the web player.

These music streaming sites use Flash because they want DRM.

Is there alternative to Flash which also gives you DRM?

For browsers that support EME, they can use the "Clear Key" key system that is part of the EME standard. It's not as secure as other DRM (because the decryption key is briefly exposed on the client), but it does not require any third-party license server like Google Widevine, Microsoft PlayReady, or Adobe Primetime. For a streaming music service, it is probably an adequate deterrent for ripping streams.

http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/eme/basics/#clear-key

Maybe you missed this ? But this whole discussion on the death of Flash was started by Facebook: http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2015/07/13/flash-aah-aah-its-...

Every video on Facebook still relies on Flash though. So I'm not sure why they haven't put their money where their mouth is about it yet? Would make Facebook a lot more accessible in most cases for me not having to rely on Flash whatsoever just to view a video. I usually end up not watching a number of videos after I realize it wont let me watch them without Flash.

I wonder if they're trying to wait out Firefox on the MP4 vs. WebM/Ogg issue. They've already gone HTML5 on the mobile versions.

Facebook is migrating from Flash to HTML5 video. As of last week, they are serving HTML5 video to users running Windows 7+, including Firefox users. Firefox supports H.264 video on Windows Vista+ and OS X because those platforms ship H.264 decoders.

Guess Linux gets excluded once again? Cause they keep pushing Flash to me, even though I have H.264?

I was surprised about last.fm not working without flash but it turned out to be ad blocker problem.

The spotify web player unfortunately requires flash as well.

> I've heard Facebook video and last.fm streaming don't work without Flash

Regarding Facebook video, I fail to see how that is a bad thing ;)

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