News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ask HN: How do you come up with side projects? by claplouder on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @10:51AM (#19036031)
A problem that bothers me is high prices of real-estate on the west-coast of Canada due to money laundering, tax avoidance, and governmental complacency. How can I address this using tech?
Re:Ask HN: How do you come up with side projects? by OldHand2018 on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @11:22AM (#19036384)
> How can I address this using tech?

If you have a hammer and can't find any nails, looking around for other things to hit is unlikely to be a productive activity.

You've identified a serious, complex issue and you care about improving the situation. That's an excellent beginning. Go to your local library and find a book on systems thinking/analysis such as Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. Start to understand how all the pieces fit together and what sort of changes will help and what will make the problem worse (you will be surprised!). Your tech experience will be extremely helpful here.

Re:Ask HN: How do you come up with side projects? by claplouder on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @09:09PM (#19041663)
what are your thoughts on this course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/model-thinking
Re:Ask HN: How do you come up with side projects? by OldHand2018 on Thursday January 31, 2019 @02:48PM (#19048094)
That course looks great. Keep in mind that you are unlikely to "learn" anything "new". It's a process; do this, do that. Put some effort here, think about that stuff there. And then you start to see interactions and cause/effect patterns that you didn't see before as well as behaviors that work completely differently than you previously believed.
Re:Ask HN: How do you come up with side projects? by wilsonnb3 on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @10:54AM (#19036061)
You probably can’t. It’s not really a tech problem.

You should be looking for something significantly smaller in scope, too.

Re:Ask HN: How do you come up with side projects? by dkoston on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @11:58AM (#19036834)
To solve problems effectively, you shouldn't try and preconceive the solution. If you really want to solve the problem, you'll need to immerse yourself in the problem and field and figure out what are some causes of the problem that you can affect.

You've distilled the problem down to "money laundering, tax avoidance, and governmental complacency" but do other issues like zoning, foreign investment, lack of suitable space, etc contribute?

While it's possible to solve problems in fields that you don't work in, it's less common. If you want to affect real-estate prices on the West coast of Canada, you should dive into the real estate industry and most likely some obvious inefficiencies will pop out that can be solved.

Re:Ask HN: How do you come up with side projects? by Sir_Cmpwn on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @11:10AM (#19036253)
Why does it have to use tech to be your side project?
Re:Ask HN: How do you come up with side projects? by antoineMoPa on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @10:55AM (#19036081)
Easy.

sudo ./join_a_party.sh && sudo ./get_elected.rb && sudo ./change_law.sh

Re:Ask HN: How do you come up with side projects? by heavenlyblue on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @11:27AM (#19036432)
>> claplouder is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.