Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The AI fatfinger economy has come for my receipts app; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/11/04/genius-scan-is-neither/
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@sposadelvento @pluralistic Thanks for mentioning FairScan! (I'm its developer.)
What's funny to me is that Wired published an article earlier this year highlighting FairScan as an alternative to the enshittification of software, using the very term popularized by Cory Doctorow:
"FairScan is like that, which makes it stand out in an increasingly enshittified field."
https://www.wired.com/story/fairscan-simple-app-for-scanning-documents-on-android/ (paywalled)
@pynicolas @sposadelvento Jut installed it, but there's an important missing feature for my use-case, which is to have an "export to email" option that pre-populates the To: line (with my email) and the Subject: line (with the title of the scan). Any chance of that coming in? Or have I missed it?
@pluralistic @pynicolas
Okay, you're right, this is a feature I wouldn't use at all.
I use the 'Share' button that appears just after any scan ; this allows me to instantly save the PDF in my remote kdrive with the right name already set, and that's all.
The interest thing here is that when I used kdrive app from GPlay, the scan feature was inside the app;
Then I turned to the app from F-droid, (GrapheneOS) that doesn't scan anymore.
Luckily Fairscan is really fine! thanks @pynicolas !
@pluralistic Thanks for trying FairScan! Just to make sure I understand: you'd like to email the scanned document to yourself, with your own email address prefilled in the To: field, and the scan title as the subject?
@pynicolas Yup! Thank you.
I just jumped from LineageOS to GrapheneOS and was just about to re-install Genius Scanner which I also use a lot when I read the Pluralistic article about it. I will go and fish the old app from my old phone and go my merry way with the non-enshittified version I think - or is there a "latest non crap" APK version we can keep to archive?
I did a round up of ALL the scanner apps on f-droid when camscanner jumped the shark years ago, and they were all rubbish. So I went to Genius scanner. Have things got better since then??
I just tried fairscan and it worked well first go (unlike any of the ones I tried on f-droid years ago) and produced an OK PDF - the old Genius Scan v7.15.1 apk I fished off my old phone may be slightly better but they are close enough it doesn't matter. cool.
The AI fatfinger economy has come for my receipts app: Every heretofore useful button now summons a useless AI genie.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/117558006008197927
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Hey look at this
* Google Will Turn Off Search for Schools That Reject A.I. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/03/us/google-search-schools-restrict-ai.html
* Private Credit's State Backstop: How Private Equity Socializes Risk Through Insurers https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7152239
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#20yrsago Army Times: Rumsfeld must go! https://web.archive.org/web/20061107220242/http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110406Z.shtml
#20yrsago UK is a surveillance society http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6108496.stm
#20yrsago Record companies sue soccer mom’s kids https://web.archive.org/web/20061104145550/https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/02/AR2006110200114.html
#15yrsago HOWTO make your own skateboard truck lazy-susan table https://www.instructables.com/Skateboard-Table/
#15yrsago Home Secretary to OccupyLondon: you’re scaring the tourists https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15588987
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#15yrsago Judge whose daughter released video of him beating her suspended from bench during judicial investigation https://web.archive.org/web/20111105234141/http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_VIDEOTAPED_BEATING_TEXAS
#15yrsago Prof who keeps announcing links between the Internet, childhood dementia and autism should publish theories in a scientific journal https://www.badscience.net/2011/11/why-wont-professor-greenfield-publish-this-theory-in-a-scientific-journal/
#10yrsago Internet of Things botnet threatens to knock the entire country of Liberia offline https://doublepulsar.com/shadows-kill-mirai-ddos-botnet-testing-large-scale-attacks-sending-threatening-messages-about-6a61553d1c7#.zg4448j8w
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@pluralistic
"Last week, I got a painful reminder of the progress of the fatfinger economy outside of Graphene's utopian pocket-universe. I make extensive use of an app called "Genius Scanner..."
No, please.
Just use F-droid to download FairScan or something like this!