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Digging Deeper — Episode 3: The $3,000 House in Japan: Bargain, Money Pit, or a Souvenir You May Never Visit?
Every once in a while, an advertisement or social-media post comes along that sounds so ridiculous that the immediate reaction is to assume somebody left out a zero. Then you look into it and discover the number may actually be real, which is where things become much more interesting. A recent post making the rounds…
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Digging Deeper Episode 04: Tripo 3D — Free to Create, Paid to Use?
One of the reasons I moved this series from “Something Stinks” to “Digging Deeper” is because not every ad deserves to be dismissed on sight. Some deserve to be tested. Tripo 3D turned out to be one of those cases. Rather than simply looking at the marketing and making assumptions, I decided to create an…
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Digging Deeper – Episode 03: The MakePlay Test — Can One AI Prompt Really Build a Playable Game?
It started as a Something Stinks candidate. Then the damned thing actually worked. When an advertisement says you can describe a video game in a single prompt and have artificial intelligence create the pixel art, code, music, levels, gameplay and a finished playable game in your browser, my first reaction is probably the same as…
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What the Hell, Valhalla Computers???
If you have been following Valhalla Computers lately, you may have noticed that things have gotten a little strange around here. There are skunks investigating suspicious claims, a squirrel poking around in contracts and pricing structures that do not quite add up, and now a badger carrying a shovel because apparently normal research was no…
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Digging Deeper – Episode 02: The AliExpress Test — Alibaba, the Factories Behind the Listings, and Who You’re Really Buying From
If Temu is the loud new neighbor who arrived with orange boxes, endless Facebook advertising, spinning prize wheels, and prices that occasionally look as though somebody forgot to carry a decimal point, AliExpress is the older house down the street that has been there so long that millions of people recognize the name without necessarily…
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Digging Deeper – Episode 01: The Temu Test — Who Owns It, Where Does the Stuff Come From, and Why Is It So Cheap?
If you have spent more than ten minutes on Facebook in the last few years, there is a fair chance Temu has tried to sell you something. Maybe it was a cordless tool for a price that seemed physically impossible. Maybe it was kitchen gadgets, fishing gear, clothes, electronics, automotive accessories, craft supplies, or some…
