Gambiarra: repair culture (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: Gambiarra: repair culture (2015)

#21

Post by rasz » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 4:01 PM UTC

personlurking wrote: post #6

Never thought I'd see the word Gambiarra at the top of HN. By the way, Portugal has a word with a bit of a similar meaning ( https://i.imgur.com/7YHjJHs.jpg ) For anyone interested in how Cubans do it, I recommend this 8 min video from Motherboard (it has subtitles): > In 1991, Cuba's economy began to implode. "The Special Period in the Time of Peace" was the government's euphemism for what was a culmination of 30 ye…

Mighty Car Mods did 'THE CARS OF CUBA' Special

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJPqe1baowA

they got paid to do fast and furious promotion, but instead concentrated on Cuban ingenuity when it comes to fixing cars without replacement parts. What you see in the episode (30-50 year old cars held together with ducttape) is not that far off from what was the norm in Eastern bloc under Russian occupation.

Re: Gambiarra: repair culture (2015)

#22

Post by zorked » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

rl12345 wrote: post #19

zorked wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accurately translated in English as "hack".

Where I come from, "Gambiarra" sometimes has a bad connotation -- in the sense that it was not well thought. So, maybe, a lazy hack?

"Hack" also has that same bad connotation. E.g. type in a changelog that you added a "hack" to fix a bug.

Re: Gambiarra: repair culture (2015)

#23

Post by rublev » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

sly010 wrote: post #13

This resonates with me a lot. My father is an old school car mechanic in eastern europe who (at least while i was young) hoarded all kinds of things and reused/repurposed them. I inherited his mentality. At some point he partnered up with a guy and they started their own business. His partner is more of a capitalist. He would run the computer diagnostics on the car, replace whatever the computer says is broken withou…

You got an email?

Re: Gambiarra: repair culture (2015)

#24

Post by leovonl » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 5:12 PM UTC

Having grown up in Brazil, where computers and parts are expensive - and in a time where the country was recovering from a galloping inflation and a failed attempt from the government to cut it back by freezing everyone's saving accounts - I can very strongly relate to this.

In fact, I think most brazilians of my generation which share same taste for building things are used to prototyping things with "a lot of duct tape" and reusing parts by disassembling unused/old toys, small machines/appliances, etc, and reusing what they can to make something new.

About the "gambiarra" term, it has a lot of connotations associated (some bad), but it also carries an idea of "subverting the original intent of the designer" or "subverting the intended usage of the parts/pieces". Which is why it fits perfectly in the idea of "hacking" for repurposing and recycling.

Re: Gambiarra: repair culture (2015)

#25

Post by brightball » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 5:12 PM UTC

sly010 wrote: post #13

This resonates with me a lot. My father is an old school car mechanic in eastern europe who (at least while i was young) hoarded all kinds of things and reused/repurposed them. I inherited his mentality. At some point he partnered up with a guy and they started their own business. His partner is more of a capitalist. He would run the computer diagnostics on the car, replace whatever the computer says is broken withou…

That kids movie Robots is basically about this exact issue.

Re: Gambiarra: repair culture (2015)

#26

Post by leobueno » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 5:16 PM UTC

zorked wrote: post #15

rl12345 wrote: post #5

Ha, when I read the post title I knew it would come from a (Brazilian) Portuguese author. The way I would explain "Gambiarra": it's a quick fix that relies heavily on an ad hoc solution instead of following the generally accepted principles for solving a problem.

Accurately translated in English as "hack".

The more appropriate translation would be "kludge".

Re: Gambiarra: repair culture (2015)

#27

Post by cfelix » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 5:26 PM UTC

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #20

When the maker culture becomes eminently entrepreneurial, we should wonder what mechanisms are set into motion. It may as well be the old capitalist drive to turn the critique to itself into the gears of its own reinvention gaining ground. Could we ever escape that path? Lately when I read things like this I wonder, how are the people in the movement -- whatever movement -- supposed to make a living without being ent…

It's not about being able to make a living, it's about how much do we really need to make a living.

Re: Gambiarra: repair culture (2015)

#28

Post by ineedasername » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

sly010 wrote: post #13

This resonates with me a lot. My father is an old school car mechanic in eastern europe who (at least while i was young) hoarded all kinds of things and reused/repurposed them. I inherited his mentality. At some point he partnered up with a guy and they started their own business. His partner is more of a capitalist. He would run the computer diagnostics on the car, replace whatever the computer says is broken withou…

It's not always easy to find the right balance. I've worked in the same place for obout 15 years. Earlier on, encountering limits of old legacy systems, I frequently spent lots of time finding creative work arounds in coding and automating. But over the years these have become less tenable, since I'm only one person, and home grown solutions without dedicated resources are a bigger risk to operations than purchasing a mediocre off the shelf product.

Re: Gambiarra: repair culture (2015)

#29

Post by Animats » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:04 PM UTC

PC recycling and repair is alive and well in the US. The SF Bay Area has the Computer Repair Center.[1] In Shenzhen, as was discussed on here, there's an active phone recycling culture, with people doing chip-level replacement on iPhones.

PC recycling was easier in the desktop era, where you could take a pile of discarded PCs and swap around boards, hard drives, cases, and power supplies until you had something that worked. All you really needed was a screwdriver. Laptops are tougher, but still repairable without too many special tools and training.

Mobile phone repair takes special skills, training, equpment, and parts, all of which are available.[2] Third-party iPhone parts are available. I'm amazed that people are doing SMD board rework in small repair shops, but they are.

[1] http://www.crc.org/ [2] https://stsparts.us/

Re: Gambiarra: repair culture (2015)

#30

Post by hkon » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 6:26 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #9

ivanbakel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because anything against capitalist thought gets mulched up, repackaged, and spat out. If you can commodify being a maker, you take away from the people who are actually subverting basic consumer thinking. I think we're seeing the same problem in the modern form of the "gig economy" versus what people initially idealised for a freer, less contractual workforce.

https://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-sociopaths

That was a good read on a saturday.