HN Gopher Feed (2017-07-08) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Gambiarra: repair culture (2015)
102 points by mat_jack1
https://efeefe-arquivo.github.io/livro/repair-culture/gambiarra/___________________________________________________________________
Animats - 4 hours ago
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/
leovonl - 5 hours ago
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.
fiatjaf - 4 hours ago
The term "gambiarra" should always come with its related "bambo",
which means floppy, or not solid enough.
chicob - 4 hours ago
Portuguese guy here.The 'desenrascan?o' culture in Portugal has
two sides to it, because on one hand people do appreciate the art
of finding quick hacks on the fly ('desenrasques'), but on the
other it just overlooks thorough planning and design.
[deleted]
digi_owl - 8 hours ago
VC discovered the "makers" hype, and things turned "weird"...
ivanbakel - 8 hours ago
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.
digi_owl - 8 hours ago
https://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-sociopaths
hkon - 4 hours ago
That was a good read on a saturday.
rl12345 - 8 hours ago
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.
pjmlp - 8 hours ago
On the other side of Atlantic also means a cable for light
extension. :)
rl12345 - 8 hours ago
Probably the origin of the expression :)
rmsaksida - 16 minutes ago
Many years ago, in my first programming job, I had to do an ugly
hack to fix an issue in production that was preventing other
people from doing their jobs. In the minutes before I made that
decision, while I was contemplating the problem, my colleague (a
senior) asked me with a very serious face: have you ever heard of
the POG methodology?"POG"? No... should I have?He smiled and
explained it to me - Programa??o Orientada a Gambiarra, or
"Gambiarra Oriented Programming".
zorked - 8 hours ago
Accurately translated in English as "hack".
leobueno - 5 hours ago
The more appropriate translation would be "kludge".
throwanem - 7 hours ago
I'd tend to agree, sort of sidewise, with the article author
that "hack", like "make" in the "maker culture" sense, is
freighted with all kinds of connotations that I think somewhat
blur its applicability here.Where and when I grew up, the term
was "jury rigging", which I think much more narrowly captures
the same meaning as "gambiarra", and likewise escapes the
commercial colonization of "hack" and "make". Jury rigs by
their very nature are one-offs - necessarily individuated
applications of ingenuity, with whatever resources happen to be
available, to solve problems often unique to the contexts in
which they arise. You can't reasonably call such a thing a
"prototype"; it's not an exploration, but rather a
(semi-)permanent solution, and should it need to be replaced
later on, likely it will be another jury-rig, itself unique
although perhaps similar to the first, that does so. Such
efforts are the very antithesis of off-the-shelf solutions.To
that point, I think the article author is both right and wrong
to decry commercialization, and the commodification of
industrial manufacturing techniques, as antithetical to pure
ingenuity. I'd agree that when one can 3D print, laser cut, and
CNC mill custom parts to a fare-thee-well, the jury-rigging or
gambiarra style of ingenuity tends to fade into disuse, because
why bother jigsawing together expedients when you can just
design the exact thing you need and then manufacture it at a
lot size of one? If it doesn't work as expected, throw it out
and make another. If it does, the nature of the process lends
itself well to the idea of productization (ugh, what a word),
because the result is already necessarily designed for
manufacture at industrial scale, with only some optimization
required. And the large-scale commercialization of "maker
culture" in general, with publicity and marketing firms
opportunistically adopting the term in a transparent bid for
the same sort of exploiting-the-na?ve business as those "We Can
Get You Published!" ads in the back pages of an old Writer's
Market, certainly merits being looked upon with distrust and
distaste.On the other hand, human ingenuity isn't a limited
resource requiring conservation; be it ever so disdained, it
will nevertheless rise anew in each generation, in each person,
faced with a challenge for which no easy off-the-shelf solution
or CADed, CNCed custom manufacture is available. We live at a
moment of historical coincidence where such solutions are far
more easily available than at any time in the past - but that
may not always be so, and either way, "the future is unevenly
distributed". In those places where it's thin on the ground,
people still jury-rig and gambiarra their way past problems,
just as we have always done - it's just that we don't hear
about it much, because it's not terribly fashionable, and in
any case people who do it can't be relied upon to noise it all
over Facebook. And should we find ourselves exiting the current
historical coincidence into a world where "the future" is less
available to everyone, we'll see human ingenuity rise to meet
the problems that new world poses, just as we always have.
rl12345 - 7 hours ago
Where I come from, "Gambiarra" sometimes has a bad connotation
-- in the sense that it was not well thought. So, maybe, a lazy
hack?
zorked - 6 hours ago
"Hack" also has that same bad connotation. E.g. type in a
changelog that you added a "hack" to fix a bug.
TheSpiceIsLife - 3 hours ago
English hack is very much the same. Only in the computer /
hobby usage sense does hack mean skilful or clever. The
opposite being the engineered solution, opposite in the
computer / hobby sense in that engineered often means over
engineered and not fun.From
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/hack?s=thack, verb1. to cut,
notch, slice, chop, or sever (something) with or as with
heavy, irregular blows (often followed by up or down): to
hack meat; to hack down trees.2. to break up the surface of
(the ground).3. to clear (a road, path, etc.) by cutting away
vines, trees, brush, or the like: They hacked a trail through
the jungle.4. to damage or injure by crude, harsh, or
insensitive treatment; mutilate; mangle: The editor hacked
the story to bits.5. to reduce or cut ruthlessly; trim: The
Senate hacked the budget severely before returning it to the
House.6. Slang. to deal or cope with; handle: He can't hack
all this commuting.7. Computers:a. to modify (a computer
program or electronic device) or write (a program) in a
skillful or clever way: Developers have hacked the app. I
hacked my tablet to do some very cool things.b. to circumvent
security and break into (a network, computer, file, etc.),
usually with malicious intent: Criminals hacked the bank's
servers yesterday.
whatever_dude - 2 hours ago
This. A "hack" is the same as a "gambiarra".In all honesty, my
impression is that some admirers of the Brazilian Portuguese
language frequently believe there are words and concepts that
are exclusive to that language while in reality there's, more
often than not, a very good translation in English or other
languages.
goshx - 7 hours ago
Yep! I used a plastic tube (as a spacer, not as a tube) and a
rubber band to fix my leaking toilet. It gives you that "I'm
MacGyver" feeling.
personlurking - 8 hours ago
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 years worth of isolation. It began in
the 60s, with engineers leaving Cuba for America. Ernesto Oroza, a
designer and artist, studied the innovations created during this
period. He found that the general population had created homespun,
Frankenstein-like machines for their survival, made from everyday
objects. Oroza began to collect these machines, and would later
contextualize it as "art" in a movement he dubbed "Technological
Disobedience."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-XS4aueDUg
rasz - 6 hours ago
Mighty Car Mods did 'THE CARS OF CUBA'
Specialhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJPqe1baowAthey 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.
mat_jack1 - 10 hours ago
Felipe Fonseca's critical thoughts about the last 10-15 years of
the "makers" movement.Very insightful reading how the general
culture of the movement has changed from a repair-reuse-recycle to
a prototype-industrial-capitalistic mentality.
brudgers - 9 hours ago
Looks like it is from 2015 since it mentions the Obama
administration in the current tense.
goshx - 8 hours ago
Yes, the date is there: 08/03/2015 (that's March 8th)
solidsnack9000 - 7 hours ago
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 entrepreneurial?
cfelix - 5 hours ago
It's not about being able to make a living, it's about how much
do we really need to make a living.
alex_duf - 8 hours ago
Probably a good thread to mention the fairphone
http://fairphone.com/Not the prettiest phone but it does what it
says on the box/ it's easy to fix it yourself
Numberwang - 8 hours ago
My friend has one of these. Sadly it has really bad build quality
and he has been on call to their support over and over.
efeefe - 3 hours ago
Hey all, thanks for the attention and comments. A slightly updated
version of this text was published in Tvergastein (walled garden
version here -
https://www.academia.edu/20808625/Gambiarra_Repair_Culture , anyone
interested in the PDF please let me know). And indeed, I have not
explored that the "repair" side of it that much. More recently,
I've been trying to think of "transformation of matter" to frame a
wider field that would encompass digital making, arts & crafts,
repair, maintenance, customization and others. I wrote another two
texts last year while researching that perspective: Transformed
Worlds (https://medium.com/@felipefonseca/transformed-worlds-
9a6bd7c... ) and Knowledge, Skill and Labor
(https://medium.com/@felipefonseca/knowledge-skill-and-labor-... ).
I'd love to read everyone's thoughts on those as well. (Felipe
Fonseca / http://efeefe.me )
sly010 - 8 hours ago
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 without much root cause analysis, then the
old parts are thrown out. This gets repeated until the car runs.
They make money on each part. The insurance company pays and
everyone is happy. My dad's quality of life is better. He has a
weekend house now. He sometimes complains how in the old days one
would really fix things instead of replacing them, but he is
getting older and not in a position change how the world works.My
own story is playing out a very similar way and I am constantly
struggling to decide what is the right thing to do and what kind of
person I want to be. Most people of my age (especially in the US)
don't even think about these things though.Edit: formatting.
brightball - 5 hours ago
That kids movie Robots is basically about this exact issue.
rublev - 6 hours ago
You got an email?
ineedasername - 5 hours ago
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.
jackfoxy - 7 hours ago
From the title I was hoping to read more about a repair culture
such as Bunny Huang discusses when he talks about the possibility
of legacy electronics in his latest book The Hardware Hacker. Of
course I have had computers repaired from time to time, and even
put life back into an old stereo receiver and analog television,
but generally in the developed world the economics of buy new vs
repair keep repair culture on the fringe, not just with
electronics.