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The Simplest Android App for Scanning Documents

WIRED

Most scanning apps try to get you to buy a cloud storage subscription or pay for extras. Not FairScan, which is free and open-source, and has some powerful features. If you're interested in going paperless, you probably think you need a scanner. It's true that hardware scanners make turning multipage documents into PDFs very simple. But most of us don't have easy access to a scanner.


Uh oh! 1 million Android apps exposed 700 TB of sensitive user data

PCWorld

PCWorld reports that over 1 million Android apps exposed 700 TB of sensitive user data through hardcoded API keys and security vulnerabilities. Research found 72% of AI apps contained dangerous "secrets" in their code, with 81% linked to Google Cloud projects enabling unauthorized third-party access. Users should exercise extreme caution when installing new apps, particularly AI applications that request sensitive financial or personal information. Towards the end of January, security researchers at Cybernews published a study on AI apps in the Google Play Store. The study revealed that numerous AI apps had inadequate security, leading them to inadvertently leak data from Google's cloud servers.


The Tea App Is Back With a New Website

WIRED

Months after major data leaks, the app where women leave Yelp-style reviews about men is relaunching with a new website. It's not back on iOS, but the Android app has new AI features. The embattled Tea app is back. Months after being removed from Apple's App Store in light of major data breaches, the app that allows women to share anonymous Yelp-style reviews of men is relaunching with a new website designed to help women "access dating guardrails without limitation," Tea's head of trust and safety Jessica Dees told WIRED. The app, which launched in 2023 and went viral last summer, getting to number 1 on the iOS App Store, lets users post photos of men while also pointing out red flags, such as if they are already partnered or registered sex offenders.


On the Effects of Data Scale on UI Control Agents

Neural Information Processing Systems

Autonomous agents that control user interfaces to accomplish human tasks are emerging. Leveraging LLMs to power such agents has been of special interest, but unless fine-tuned on human-collected task demonstrations, performance is still relatively low. In this work we study whether fine-tuning alone is a viable approach for building real-world UI control agents. To this end we collect and release a new dataset, AndroidControl, consisting of 15,283 demonstrations of everyday tasks with Android apps. Compared to existing datasets, each AndroidControl task instance includes both high and low-level human-generated instructions, allowing us to explore the level of task complexity an agent can handle. Moreover, AndroidControl is the most diverse computer control dataset to date, including 14,548 unique tasks over 833 Android apps, thus allowing us to conduct in-depth analysis of the model performance in and out of the domain of the training data. Using the dataset, we find that when tested in domain fine-tuned models outperform zero and few-shot baselines and scale in such a way that robust performance might feasibly be obtained simply by collecting more data. Out of domain, performance scales significantly more slowly and suggests that in particular for high-level tasks, fine-tuning on more data alone may be insufficient for achieving robust out-of-domain performance.


Manage Android apps with the new 'Uninstall' button

FOX News

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Remote Autonomy for Multiple Small Lowcost UAVs in GNSS-denied Search and Rescue Operations

Schleich, Daniel, Quenzel, Jan, Behnke, Sven

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In recent years, consumer-grade UAVs have been widely adopted by first responders. In general, they are operated manually, which requires trained pilots, especially in unknown GNSS-denied environments and in the vicinity of structures. Autonomous flight can facilitate the application of UAVs and reduce operator strain. However, autonomous systems usually require special programming interfaces, custom sensor setups, and strong onboard computers, which limits a broader deployment. We present a system for autonomous flight using lightweight consumer-grade DJI drones. They are controlled by an Android app for state estimation and obstacle avoidance directly running on the UAV's remote control. Our ground control station enables a single operator to configure and supervise multiple heterogeneous UAVs at once. Furthermore, it combines the observations of all UAVs into a joint 3D environment model for improved situational awareness.


AppForge: From Assistant to Independent Developer -- Are GPTs Ready for Software Development?

Ran, Dezhi, Cao, Yuan, Wu, Mengzhou, Chen, Simin, Guo, Yuzhe, Ren, Jun, Song, Zihe, Yu, Hao, Wei, Jialei, Li, Linyi, Yang, Wei, Ray, Baishakhi, Xie, Tao

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capability in function-level code generation tasks. Unlike isolated functions, real-world applications demand reasoning over the entire software system: developers must orchestrate how different components interact, maintain consistency across states over time, and ensure the application behaves correctly within the lifecycle and framework constraints. Yet, no existing benchmark adequately evaluates whether LLMs can bridge this gap and construct entire software systems from scratch. To address this gap, we propose APPFORGE, a benchmark consisting of 101 software development problems drawn from real-world Android apps. Given a natural language specification detailing the app functionality, a language model is tasked with implementing the functionality into an Android app from scratch. Developing an Android app from scratch requires understanding and coordinating app states, lifecycle management, and asynchronous operations, calling for LLMs to generate context-aware, robust, and maintainable code. To construct APPFORGE, we design a multi-agent system to automatically summarize the main functionalities from app documents and navigate the app to synthesize test cases validating the functional correctness of app implementation. Following rigorous manual verification by Android development experts, APPFORGE incorporates the test cases within an automated evaluation framework that enables reproducible assessment without human intervention, making it easily adoptable for future research. Our evaluation on 12 flagship LLMs show that all evaluated models achieve low effectiveness, with the best-performing model (GPT-5) developing only 18.8% functionally correct applications, highlighting fundamental limitations in current models' ability to handle complex, multi-component software engineering challenges.


How to disable Gemini AI on Android and keep control of your apps

FOX News

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld and guests discuss the reportedly woke answers from Google's AI chatbot Gemini on'Gutfeld!' Google is making a push to ensure its AI, Gemini, is tightly integrated with Android systems by granting it access to core apps like WhatsApp, Messages, and Phone. The rollout of this change started on July 7, 2025, and it may override older privacy configurations unless you know how to disable Gemini on Android. Here's what you need to know. Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you'll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide - free when you join my CYBERGUY.COM/NEWSLETTER.


On the Effects of Data Scale on UI Control Agents

Neural Information Processing Systems

Autonomous agents that control user interfaces to accomplish human tasks are emerging. Leveraging LLMs to power such agents has been of special interest, but unless fine-tuned on human-collected task demonstrations, performance is still relatively low. In this work we study whether fine-tuning alone is a viable approach for building real-world UI control agents. To this end we collect and release a new dataset, AndroidControl, consisting of 15,283 demonstrations of everyday tasks with Android apps. Compared to existing datasets, each AndroidControl task instance includes both high and low-level human-generated instructions, allowing us to explore the level of task complexity an agent can handle.


LLMs in Mobile Apps: Practices, Challenges, and Opportunities

Hau, Kimberly, Hassan, Safwat, Zhou, Shurui

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The integration of AI techniques has become increasingly popular in software development, enhancing performance, usability, and the availability of intelligent features. With the rise of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, developers now have access to a wealth of high-quality open-source models and APIs from closed-source providers, enabling easier experimentation and integration of LLMs into various systems. This has also opened new possibilities in mobile application (app) development, allowing for more personalized and intelligent apps. However, integrating LLM into mobile apps might present unique challenges for developers, particularly regarding mobile device constraints, API management, and code infrastructure. In this project, we constructed a comprehensive dataset of 149 LLM-enabled Android apps and conducted an exploratory analysis to understand how LLMs are deployed and used within mobile apps. This analysis highlights key characteristics of the dataset, prevalent integration strategies, and common challenges developers face. Our findings provide valuable insights for future research and tooling development aimed at enhancing LLM-enabled mobile apps.