canadapups

They're definitely not trying - in any form. I run a marketplace for dogs (i.e. craigslist for puppies & dogs) and scammers are always trying to post fakes ads. They always use Gmail accounts. Every time I ban a gmail address, they scammers will just get a new one. Same scammer/person has created thousands of gmail accounts and Google doesn't care. I have reported this to Google. For the amount of info Google has on people, trivial for them to prevent some of this.

My wife has a masters degree in marketing. She ditched the desk job to become a dog breeder. She's never going to have desk job ever again. After a few years she asked me to build online business related to it (https://www.canadapups.com). I think the key is to mix expertise. Marketing + dogs, technology + dogs, technology + coffee. If someone feels like they need to switch careers, it's probably a great idea - good chance of success in the next career due to bringing the previous careers skills to the new one.

I did the same thing but dumped it into a table. Small enough dataset that can load the entire thing and just use jquery to filter via drop down selector.

To make it useful I tried filter on characteristics that a buyer would be interested in such as long-haired vs. short.

I also gathered the data manually. I'll have to compare datasets

https://www.canadapups.com/breeds

I run an online marketplace. It's a constant battle against scammers putting up fake items to sell. While I do run "content moderation" to identify the scams, the fakes are identical or nearly identical to the real items. Content moderation isn't the solution for me. As other commenters point out it's just war of attrition or cycle of escalation from a few bad actors.

The only effective method I have now is fingerprinting (i.e., invading users privacy). Browsers are becoming more privacy oriented so at time goes on fingerprinting will be less effective, with more people being scammed online. I don't think those that want privacy at all costs understand the trade off.

In a few months, I will move to an voluntary fingerprinting/identification scheme soon (like GDPR cookies opt in). Where you identify yourself or don't use my website... which may leave me as a "die an MVP" example.

My website was built in the 1.x version days and I don't think there have been any material breaking changes. My website is moderate in complexity... authentication, database, forms, file uploads, email, language support.

I just migrated to PythonAnywhere.com and it was a breeze. They also have browser access to command line, REPL, Jupyter notebooks too.

Tango with Django was by far the best resource I've used.

Two Scoops is more for people who have a django project already and want to learn best practices of django.

> she’s noticed some really nasty and hard to detect parasites which she suspects originates from these types of diets

I've also seen a friends dog get very sick from raw food, but from bacteria. Required a vet visit for antibiotics.

> Their typical died consists of a mixture of green or yellow split peas, pressure cooked for 43 minutes, then blended to a medium-thickness liquid, and cooked brown rice

That's starting to sound like Beyond Meat's recipe!

> Not all rescues are good.

Yes. Any one can call themselves a rescue. And rescues can have a wide variety of beliefs and procedures.

It is not a meme. Rescue dogs often have issues. While not all, probably >50% in my personal ~10 dog sample size. At 50% it is worth a warning to new dog owners and shouldn't be outright dismissed.

Rescue dogs are usually surrendered because the owner didn't train them. So even excluding any emotional issues, the dog has to be broken of bad habits. A new puppy won't soil where it sleeps, so house training is easy. But a dog that's been locked up most of it's life will, and extra effort in training is needed... not the best for a new dog owner.

I used to live in an area with lots of apartment buildings and had to babysit a friends dog for a couple of weeks. I met a couple of people when I took the dog out at 6:30am because they were doing the same thing. Ran into the same people every day. Plus you always let the dogs visit (sniff each other) so starting a conversation is almost automatic.

Now I have my own dogs. Easy to meet people if you go to obedience, agility, or other dog classes.

With a dog you get all of the above, plus the affection from the dog, plus the additional exercise.

You can get a sense of advertising fees by looking at comparable newspaper ads and industry trade magazines. Even take a look at billboard or radio ads. Custom ads will be an order of magnitude higher that what you get from Google.

We started doing that too, in addition to Google ads. We deal directly with the advertiser, self host a specific ad for them. It's MUCH more profitable than Google ads. Will phase out the Google Ads soon.

Minimal work involved. A bunch of emails back and forth, where we tell them our ad size if they provide an image. Or they provide a logo and we manually ad the text if they aren't technical enough to provide a custom image.

Yeah, the magic is a big problem for me. When I was a absolute beginner, even knowing which magic (ruby gems) to pick was a problem. In contrast, Django has all of the functionality within the library, all working together. After I launched my website and became more experienced, I started replacing the default parts with custom parts. Django's explicitness and lack of magic made that easy.

What's wrong with Samoyeds? I understand corgis (dwarfism) and bulldogs (breathing problems) and american german shepherds (hip problems). A quick internet search didn't bring anything up regarding samoyeds and even says they have 12 - 14 life span and breed has been around for a long time.

Not only is $3,000 not unheard of, it's common. $10K for a french bulldog or small pomeranian or chihuahua is not unheard of.

Wow, that is the interesting article, not the wikipedia one. Some excerpts:

"The groundbreaking approach is based on analyzing the bioelectric activity of the animals' brain and central nervous system"

"Because of errors in "signal behavior," the accuracy achieved by the traditional dog method is only 60 percent, says Zaripov. However, the new method being used has increased detection accuracy to nearly 100 percent."

While we hate Google for the privacy invasion in advertising, reCAPTCHA is one the areas that is a definite positive. Google has the data and the unique position to make the web safer. I wish they did more.

Need to give them credit for fighting: hurting malicious websites by not sending them traffic, keeping search results relevant against SEO abuses, cutting down email spam effectiveness, ... and reCaptcha.

All of this becomes very relevant when you run our own online business like I do. You can lament that google knows you're shopping for a new car, but my users lose real dollars if a scammer gets on my website - and google provides the tools to combat this.

And, no you can't implement your own captcha. No matter how smart you think you are, you don't have the data that Google does.

No, my point is Google allows and/or enables fraud and they could be doing more to fight it. Source: the article we are discussing, "How a Massive Ad Fraud Scheme Exploited Android Phones to Steal Millions". And my experience with scammers using Gmail.

I do clip it. I have to do many other things too (spending time and money) to counteract scammers usage of google's services. Given google's ability to track people, they'd could do more against fraud, instead of letting scammers use their services freely (hence my comment of them enabling scammers).

When it comes to email spam or fake email accounts, Google not only allows it, they enable it. One scammer can setup thousands of gmail accounts and google doesn't blink an eye. Gmail also allows "scammer+1@gmail.com" and "scammer+2@gmail" to be the same account. I've reported obvious gmail abuse to Google through their channels, but nothing. Same scammer keeps coming back with new email accounts.

ok, good suggestion.

Step 1 - Find a Lawyer:

1a. Ask people you know. For example, if at a company, maybe you can ask the legal dept for a referral for your personal project. Lawyers know lawyers. Even a divorce or real-estate lawyer will know other lawyers in different specialties or reputations of firms. Ask bankers, dentists, any small business people, etc. - they use lawyers too.

1b. Use Google. Call 5 lawyers and setup a meeting to meet them.

Step 2 - Interview them:

Interview them like you interview any potential employee. What is their experience with small IT projects? Are you small potatoes to them? What are their fees? Do they have legal associates to do the grunt work for cheaper than a legal partner (partner will still review and be responsible)? What do they suggest you to do for your side project? Ask why to see if they can explain themselves well. How well do you communicate with them? Do they respond to your emails or telephone calls quickly? Do they have other partners who can cover for them when they go on holidays or are busy with other urgent cases? Can they let you do some of the work such as incorporating and registering a trade name because it is easy (to keep legal fees low)?

Step 3 - Evaluate them:

As they work, get them send you all their documents. Read the legalese and ask more questions. Do they still explain themselves well. How long do they take to do the work? Attention to detail is important. If their work sucks or you don't communicate well with them go find a new lawyer.

> I'd chance it.

Without consulting a lawyer, you don't know what you are chancing. I hardly call that a good bet.

Not knowing how to get a lawyer or accountant is not a good excuse for not consulting one.

If you consult a lawyer for 1 project, you do learn from the lawyer and become a bit more knowledgeable for the next project and may not need to consult a lawyer a second time if the new project is similar.

Amended pro tip: consult a lawyer + accountant... and get business insurance.

I'm still in my non-tech day job. Not planning on switching. Just a side project for fun (and profit). I think the Rails Tutorial is a good way to learn basics even if you end up using javascript (react or whatever later on). Ruby is my favorite language, but Django (in Python) suits me well.

you mean an ipad? i guess that's the joke.

I worked on it in my free time. I have an non-tech day job. From zero (start reading CS101 book) to launch was 1 year. Could have been less if I didn't abandon my Rails version and re-do in Django.

I skimmed some of his blog posts:

> "On the private beta launch, I posted a link to Hacker News and it fortunately got covered on the top page and it resulted in over 1,000 beta entries. Beta users gave me lots of suggestions and bug reports and they helped me evolve the app to be ready for the official release."

https://blog.inkdrop.info/how-i-built-a-markdown-editor-earn...

I built CanadaPups.com.

At first I started to learn by reading Computer Science 101 textbooks. The intro MIT textbook is in python and has more depth than other CS101 books. (Guttag, John. Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python.)

I then went practical, I learnt Ruby on Rails via https://www.railstutorial.org/. It was good to provide me with mental framework of how websites are built... html, coding and database.

For the actual CanadaPups project, I switched from Rails to Django because I found Rails to be too confusing (maybe due to my inexperience at the time).