Tech

Deactivation of Flash cripples Chinese railroad for a day

Passengers pulling luggage ring a squat concrete terminal.

Enlarge / Dalian Railway Station. (credit: akiradhin / Wikipedia)

In 2017, Adobe announced it would deactivate Flash at the end of 2020. Earlier this month, on January 12, Adobe carried through on its plans, activating Flash installations around the world. One result, according to Apple Daily, was chaos in a Chinese railroad in Liaoning province.

Officials at China Railway Shenyang use Flash-based software to plan each day’s railroad operations. As a result of the outage, Apple Daily says, “staffers were reportedly unable to view train operation diagrams, formulate train sequencing schedules, and arrange shunting plans.”

As a result, the railroad was unable to dispatch its trains, “leading to a complete shutdown of its railroads in Dalian, Liaoning province,” according to Apple Daily.

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