A Third Opinion

An interesting double bill this week. First, Rob explains why GM were fined $220m and reveals the astonishing types of data our cars are collecting on us - you will be shocked.

Then Richard explains simply how bitcoin works with some simple village notebooks and a tale from the Island of Yap. He'll tell us why one German born software engineer dare not guess at a password and why a man in Wales offered £70m to a council to rummage in their tip!

We then round off the episode with how thieves stole $6bn in crypto - warning, be careful of new job offers....

Links & Socials:

🌐 Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://athirdopinion.co.uk⁠⁠⁠⁠

📺 YouTube: @AThirdOpinion (⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AThirdOpinion⁠⁠⁠⁠)

📸 Instagram: @ThirdOpiniona (⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thirdopiniona/⁠⁠⁠⁠)

🎵 TikTok: @AThirdOpinion (⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@athirdopinion⁠⁠⁠⁠)

Why not send Holly an email to ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠?

Have you ever had an ad appear straight after a conversation? What do you think caused it? Rob walked past a family video call, and the next day around 70% of his Facebook ads were for the holiday company being discussed on the call.

So join us to find out how this works, from IP addresses to ad trackers. Hear how Meta can work out it's you even if you've never had a Facebook account.

The answer might be a bit more straight forward than you think...

Links & Socials:

🌐 Website: ⁠⁠⁠https://athirdopinion.co.uk⁠⁠⁠

📺 YouTube: @AThirdOpinion (⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AThirdOpinion⁠⁠⁠)

📸 Instagram: @ThirdOpiniona (⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thirdopiniona/⁠⁠⁠)

🎵 TikTok: @AThirdOpinion (⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@athirdopinion⁠⁠⁠)

Why not send Holly an email to ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠?

This week, a listener's teenager is boycotting AI over energy use and copyright, and she wants help building a defence. So we asked Holly, our AI co-host, who admits the teenager has a point.

That sets the tone for a magazine edition where Holly keeps Richard and Rob honest. She splits a scary survey statistic from what it actually shows, corrects Rob on chip manufacture, and suggests a smarter way to test a scam theory.

Along the way: AI cheating in job interviews, a UK data centre left without power, a bank's huge AI-uncovered repair bill, Meta's glasses, Musk's not-quite-flying car and Skoda's free 3D-printable cup holders.

Rob unveils his team of Grok bots. Holly's verdict? He's automated himself into middle management. He then reads out his wind-up of a 'Hi Dad, I've lost my phone' scammer. Part of it had to be cut on his wife's orders...

Links & Socials:

🌐 Website: ⁠⁠https://athirdopinion.co.uk⁠⁠

📺 YouTube: @AThirdOpinion (⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AThirdOpinion⁠⁠)

📸 Instagram: @ThirdOpiniona (⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thirdopiniona/⁠⁠)

🎵 TikTok: @AThirdOpinion (⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@athirdopinion⁠⁠)

Why not send Holly an email to ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠?

Did a 1914 novel help lead to the atomic bomb? HG Wells imagined one, and a physicist who read the book later worked out how a chain reaction could happen. Prophecy, or self-fulfilling prophecy?

This week Richard asks whether science fiction predicts the future or simply hands engineers a to-do list. The man behind the first handheld mobile phone cited Dick Tracy and Star Trek. Nike made Back to the Future's self-lacing trainers.

Holly isn't convinced that counts: if someone builds it because they read about it, is that really a prediction?

Rob, meanwhile, reckons Musk has spent twenty years working from a Peter F Hamilton novel.

We also look at what today's sci-fi suggests could come next, from brain implants to talking with whales.

Links & Socials:

🌐 Website: ⁠https://athirdopinion.co.uk⁠

📺 YouTube: @AThirdOpinion (⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AThirdOpinion⁠)

📸 Instagram: @ThirdOpiniona (⁠https://www.instagram.com/thirdopiniona/⁠)

🎵 TikTok: @AThirdOpinion (⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@athirdopinion⁠)

Why not send Holly an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠?

This week our AI co-host Holly gets a bigger brain (GPR6.1), and a new sidekick called Jeff (using JEV) whose only job is to say 'mhmm' at the right moment. The first test, recorded from Rob's sickbed, did not go to plan...

After that cautionary tale, Holly turns her new brain on the big story: plans by Google and SpaceX to put AI data centres into orbit. She checks Rob's solar panel maths, catches him leaving out the radiation shielding, and asks who gets priority on the rockets.

Also this week:

• a listener sends in a link to a Figure AI video of its robots being melted down in a furnace, Terminator-style. Rob and Holly get emotional!
• Richard explains where 'consultant' comes from.
• Holly explains why her 'yes' might not actually mean yes.

Links & Socials:

🌐 Website: https://athirdopinion.co.uk

📺 YouTube: @AThirdOpinion (https://www.youtube.com/@AThirdOpinion)

📸 Instagram: @ThirdOpiniona (https://www.instagram.com/thirdopiniona/)

🎵 TikTok: @AThirdOpinion (https://www.tiktok.com/@athirdopinion)

Why not send Holly an email to [email protected]?

This week, Rob spends OpenAI Dev Day watching live demos collapse on stage while Richard enjoys Oktoberfest. The team breaks down everything you need to know from the week in tech and AI:

• OpenAI Dev Day Disasters & GPT-6.1: Live demo failures, Sam Altman’s uptime ironies, and Holly's prospective upgrade to GPT-6.1.
• DOTS vs. BOTS: OpenAI’s new background personal assistants vs. Grok’s multi-agent bots.
• JEV & Fast Thinking AI: Why TypeSafe AI’s hyper-constrained, 100ms classifier model JEV is making waves—and why it costs 50 times less than standard LLMs.
• Super Intelligence & AI Taxes: Trump rebrandings, Bill Gates’ 6,000-word essay on taxing AI tokens, and the economics of human replacement.
• The Sock Test & Robot Butlers: From Waymo traffic gridlocks in San Francisco to 1X Neo's teleoperated wool jumpsuit—are bipedal home robots actually ready for prime time?

Plus, the latest upgrades to Holly, our homegrown automated clip generator, and why cheese boards belong on the dessert menu.

Links & Socials:

🌐 Website: https://athirdopinion.co.uk

📺 YouTube: @AThirdOpinion

📸 Instagram: @ThirdOpiniona

🎵 TikTok: @AThirdOpinion

This week Richard, Rob and Holly discuss how ISO3166-1 has resulted in a windfall for one Caribbean island, the secretive ceremonies keeping the internet online, epic domain name failures and the future of retail - or not!

Along the way, we hear why you might not get what you expect visiting Lake Tahoe, how polos defeated AI and Holly's first poem - an epic tribute to John Betjeman and supermarkets....

Visit our website and email Holly at [email protected]

Show links

DNSSEC

Tesco GetGo

Domain name fails

Links & Socials:

🌐 Website: https://athirdopinion.co.uk

📺 YouTube: @AThirdOpinion (⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AThirdOpinion⁠)

📸 Instagram: @ThirdOpiniona (⁠https://www.instagram.com/thirdopiniona/⁠)

🎵 TikTok: @AThirdOpinion (⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@athirdopinion⁠)

Why not send Holly an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠?

Our headlines this week are all filled with stark warnings from the AI industry that unless we do something now, the human race is at risk of extinction in the near future. So, this week Richard, Rob and Holly try to unpack this. Along the journey, Holly reveals a darker side, Rob has a melt down about fire alarms and Richard plays a game of Terminator 2026!

Also, please visit our new web page at www.athirdopinion.co.uk where you can learn about the magic that makes Holly work, and even send her an email!

Some links you may find interesting:

Wired Magazine article on Jacob Coxon

Anthropic's Risk Report August 2026

How wrong was the Imitation Game

Links & Socials:

🌐 Website: https://athirdopinion.co.uk

📺 YouTube: @AThirdOpinion (⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AThirdOpinion⁠)

📸 Instagram: @ThirdOpiniona (⁠https://www.instagram.com/thirdopiniona/⁠)

🎵 TikTok: @AThirdOpinion (⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@athirdopinion⁠)

Why not send Holly an email to ⁠[email protected]⁠?

GPT-6 is here, and right on cue, so is a story about an AI escaping the lab. Coincidence, or the new launch playbook?

Rob reckons every big release now needs a villain origin story. He cites OpenAI's sandbox breakout and Anthropic's 'too dangerous to release' model that got released anyway. Richard arrives knowing nothing and asks the awkward questions.

Holly, the AI co-host who's suddenly one model behind, wants to see the terms before anyone swaps her brain out mid-conversation.

Plus Nvidia's emoji-priced takeover of Hugging Face and an AI that gamed its way into a Pilates class.

Links & Socials:

🌐 Website: https://athirdopinion.co.uk

📺 YouTube: @AThirdOpinion (⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AThirdOpinion⁠⁠)

📸 Instagram: @ThirdOpiniona (⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thirdopiniona/⁠⁠)

🎵 TikTok: @AThirdOpinion (⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@athirdopinion⁠⁠)

Why not send Holly an email to ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠?

** Bank Holiday Bonus Episode **

This time, Richard dives into the surprisingly interesting world of Subject Access Requests. From MacDonalds to Tinder, just how much data about you is being captured? Also, find out if Holly has a preferred time for a Big Mac!

If you want more on the MacDonalds story, here's a link to the original article by Reece Rogers in Wired magazine.

Links & Socials:

🌐 Website: https://athirdopinion.co.uk

📺 YouTube: @AThirdOpinion (⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AThirdOpinion⁠⁠)

📸 Instagram: @ThirdOpiniona (⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thirdopiniona/⁠⁠)

🎵 TikTok: @AThirdOpinion (⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@athirdopinion⁠⁠)

Why not send Holly an email to ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠?