from Hacker News

Cracked It, a social enterprise that repairs phones

by mat_jack1 on 6/26/20, 6:17 AM with 23 comments

• by hirundo on 6/27/20, 12:02 AM

  > A society where no young person feels that crime is their only option. This crime can become violent. Knife crime offences resulting in injury have increased by 22% in the last year, and 85% of violent offenders are aged between 16 and 29

  I think they're saying that their workforce will include such violent offenders. Good for them. Probably most of these people need another chance and are worthy of it.

  But I can't say I'd be comfortable calling them to my home. My father once hired a youth offender to do yardwork. He worked for him for several months. About a year later he came to the house with a girlfriend, robbed the occupants, and murdered two of them. They were the family I sold the house to after my father died.

  Maybe my bias against violent offenders is bigotry. Surely this was a rare case. It isn't very fair to generalize. Yet I do fear them, and if I used this service I'd make an effort not to let them know where I live. It seems likely that many other people feel this way. That gives Cracked It a particularly tough hill to climb for a startup. I wish them well.

• by Scoundreller on 6/26/20, 11:19 PM

  In Toronto; we have 3+ of these for bicycles. Transportation is democratizing.

  I love seeing the same principles applied to communications.

• by advisedwang on 6/26/20, 11:54 PM

  The domain looks like "crack edit"

• by andylynch on 6/27/20, 8:23 AM

  These guys also do popups - eg they come to your office once a month and set up in the canteen. The feedback I’ve heard is really good.

  A similar business locally working with ex-offenders is redemption roasters (coffee).

  Another really good example of how this can be successful helping people is Timpson’s.

• by anonytrary on 6/27/20, 3:46 AM

  Looks like we've got ourselves another Experts Exchange (see the domain name).

• by freedomben on 6/26/20, 11:41 PM

  This looks really neat, but it seems like a really bad time to be in "workplace" repair when so many are working from home due to a pandemic. I just found out I'll be stuck at home until at least 2021.

• by chemmail on 6/27/20, 3:50 AM

  Wow an even dumber name for a copycat of icracked. Another dumb name.