Scan Your PDF
Productivity
pdf tool
SHOW HN2020
How HN took it
15 positive, 44 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 20 critical, out of 81 comments about the project. Thread score -0.07.
Idea: 6 for, 7 againstExecution: 4 for, 5 againstPrivacy: 1 for, 6 againstPerformance: 1 for, 1 againstDesign: 2 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Useful solution for organisations demanding scanned signed copies
From 2 comments
I can't believe that I'm saying this but this is soooo needed. It's ridiculous to me how many organizations still require hand-signed copies as if that is somehow a deterrent to…
dkonofalski on HNThis is cool and would be useful from time to time with some stupid organisations that insist for some reason on full scanning. Perhaps one suggestion. Can you update your…
secfirstmd on HN
Clever, fun technical project
From 2 comments
Impressed to see this is your first open source project! What a fantastic blend of simplicity, technology, and wit. I love it. Original (was PDF): https://i.imgur.com/v5nn1ql.png…
switz on HNYour convert and gs mastery is truly impressive, great job and great project.
SanchoPanda on HN
Objections
Uploading private documents to a server is a privacy risk
From 2 comments
From the github repo, the site is a wrapper around exactly two shell commands. Instead of uploading your data to an untrusted site, you can run from the comfort and safety of…
jmwilson on HNHaha, great job. There's also something to be said for the grim humour of how technology led us to this point. Sadly, I'd also be extremely wary of sending the kind of documents…
j_4 on HN
Server security issues such as exposed admin and key in repo
From 2 comments
Great you decided to share the source code, but then I was able to see that you let the admin session enabled. you can disable that on production…
atum47 on HNYou may want to purge the key in your repo (settings.py)
greenknight on HN
Scanning signed documents may not satisfy some legal requirements
From 1 comment
But scanning these documents defeats the point. The law isn't saying "it must be signed with wet ink, but after that a scanned copy is sufficient", it says you need the actual…
lilyball on HN
Requests
Add before and after examples on the site
From 3 comments
Pretty cool idea! One suggestion: add thumbnail/preview of how docs will look like after "scanned". Or maybe even a "Before and After" teaser! :)
newx on HNSuggestion: Include some before/after examples
raldi on HNcan you put an example picture side by side, right on the frontpage
sergiotapia on HN
Offer a desktop or client-side version for private documents
From 2 comments
Can this be done client side so the PDF does not need to be uploaded anywhere?
electriclove on HNThanks, I totally agree. That's why I made the code public so you can see what's being run. A friend very privacy-minded told me maybe a desktop app could be used by those who…
baicunko on HN
Add more realistic artifacts like tilt per page and specks
From 2 comments
It looks like what is being used for the transformation is: 1) set to grayscale (optional), 2) add blur, 3) slight rotational tilt, 4) add gaussian blur (?) You can go one…
doc_gunthrop on HNSuggestion: For multi-page documents, it would be nice to use slightly different rotation parameters for each page.
leethargo on HN
Questions
Is this needed in countries other than the US?
From 1 comment
I live in Germany and I never had anyone telling me that a PDF signed digitally wasn’t enough, especially if they expect you to e-mail it back to them. Is this a US problem?
camillomiller on HN
Can deployment be documented so people can self-host?
From 2 comments
This is cool and would be useful from time to time with some stupid organisations that insist for some reason on full scanning. Perhaps one suggestion. Can you update your…
secfirstmd on HNThat's a pretty cool project. Do you mind explaining your deployment process?
lilblockchains on HN
Alternatives named
Raw ImageMagick and Ghostscript commands run locally
From 2 comments
From the github repo, the site is a wrapper around exactly two shell commands. Instead of uploading your data to an untrusted site, you can run from the comfort and safety of…
jmwilson on HNI've extracted the oneliner command that runs this into a gist of a simple bash script. I don't want to send my PDFs to an unknown server. Also modified a bit (density and output…
jduckles on HN
FalsiScan
From 1 comment
Show HN: FalsiScan – Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned (770 points, 34 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22811653
miles on HN
Adobe Acrobat or Reader signature and scanning features
From 2 comments
This is basically what Adobe Reader does with its signature feature.
jschwartzi on HNNot to detract from this, because it is brilliant, and I'll definitely use in the future as a last resort. Before resorting to this, I've found that if I convert the PDF to an…
yourapostasy on HN