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Purely a guess but I suspect this isn't entirely true. True of anything on the market today, likely not going back a few years. Can imagine some early, non-inverter types having some form of resistance electric defrost.

Locally run good models unlocks so many use cases. Buying a software license for a local install would be excellent (like the good old days lol) but it won't be £20. It would break the sketched out business models of the big AI companies though so not expecting it to happen in a huge hurry. All these free models all rely on big expensive training done by researchers. The models are being given out for free as a taster with the hope it generates income in future. Can't see that continuing for long. Facebook already pulled back on open access, Deepseek, Alibaba also pulling back. AI companies also putting fear of god into governments with how powerful their 'best' models are (Mythos) and talking about how they can't let the public access them. Governments are currently on a drive to force operating systems to verify your age before you can use them, chat apps and cloud storage to scan your messages and files for anything illegal, 3d printers to verify you aren't printing something that's banned before you can print. Free and open access to things is getting harder not easier.

Maybe this is true for UK specific monobloc, but heatpumps were primarly invented for cooling. The vast vast majority of heatpumps deployed worldwide do cooling first, heating second. Including air to water ones. Reversible heatpumps have been available for decades globally though only more recently in a mass market form. Once you have a working and efficient heatpump the engineering required for the reversing valve is almost trival. In any case, I think your above statement is not justifiable for any heatpump that was not designed specifically for the UK market.

Agree, Apple will have to pay and therefore so will Apple's customers. They have been suggesting this so far, but the economics are not yet stacking up. OpenAI just pulled back on it's memory order and has recently changed CFO due to accounting issues. They are struggling to complete funding rounds. A lot of the 'orders' placed so far may not get executed (orders in OpenAI case not actually being orders but rather letters of intent). Datacenters that were supposed to be complete by now are delayed to late 2027 (no datacenter to host the server, no point buying the ram for the server). But even if the AI companies are able and willing to pay (and they have datacentre space), so will a lot of Apples customers. Especially those who are buying big memory Studios. These are literally the same pool of people. AI developers spending investor money. Maybe the big labs aren't buying Studios but the smaller startups trying to come up with unique/differentiated products will. This I disagree with. Apple is big enough that the makers will build whatever Apple wants. Micron can produce x amount of wafers per month. Apple commits to buy 20% of the wafers. Micron asks what patterns do you want on them? I was wrong earlier in the thread when I said the dies on the large mac's are not common. Having read more I believe its more that each package/chip has a taller stack of more standard dies (still not anything like the memory used in by Nvidia for their AI chips but likely the same as used in iPhones). So Apple sells 250 million iPhones a year. Both the iPhone and Mac Studio use LPDDR5. One 512GB Mac Studio is equivalent to 64 iPhones (8GB). If Apple is limited by how many wafers it can get, then availability of product is a purely business decision for them, where can they make the most profit. If they can make more profit selling a Mac Studio than selling 64 iPhones they will sell the Mac Studio. I suspect any limitations on Apples supply will be minimal if they are willing to pay because they are a long term customer. Lead times will always be long for Apple. The packaging of these dies onto ICs and then those ICs onto the CPU package adds many steps. So if Apple misjudges quantities it takes a lot of time to correct.

Self build/custom homes are a different planet to bog standard UK housing, no? It's a situation where the customer cares about the details (to varying degrees but still much more than developers).

My main argument is that Apple places bigger orders than the AI companies and is a well established long term customer. The memory manufacturers will make whatever their customers are willing to pay for. If Apple wants it and is willing to pay, it will get.

It's entirely possible there will be some impact on Apple this WWDC. Their pre-orders from last year all being consumed and them having to pay higher prices from now on. My argument was always that the shortages we've been witnessing so far have been baked in since before the RAM crisis started and therefore not directly caused by it (just people buying more high memory Apple products). Apple should be able to get supply they are big enough and have high enough margins (can can always raise the price of the Mac Studio*). Price is the big question. *The people buying high ram Mac Studios almost all want them for AI and therefore will pay over the odds for them if they can get them.

Seems to echo my earlier thoughts: https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/apple-mac-mini-supply-3e7a7509

My feeling here would be to run the incoming to where the EV charger/solar is and then run ducting from there into the house with one mains cable for the whole house (would need additional ducting for comms). Looks like you could run almost the whole route outside the footprint of the house to allow easy access later. But there might be an electrical/building control reason why you shouldn't do that?

If you think ahead and make it possible to remove the back boxes after installation (cables routed through the back rather than side holes, plasterboard cut out big enough, screws positioned with this in mind) then each socket gives access to the cableway. Might be a pain to remove and put back but less of a pain than making/patching holes. Corners are a big concern so likely need to plan for sockets on both walls fairly close to corners. Having well thought out routes between each room and a centralish location with conduit/accessible tray is another element to make this feasible.

It's basically an iPhone 16 in a laptop case. Apart from the limited USB ports it appears to be a significantly better buy than similar priced windows laptops.

Thought Apple tended to be quite efficient memory wise. The Macbook Neo with only 8GB is getting rave reviews and appears perfectly capable of average user usage (not specialised apps though).

It does look good, for me though I think the amount of work offset the attractiveness of the result. Sometimes it seems that way but I can't discount that Jenna seems have huge drive and ability to motivate and she does most of the filming/editing which is what's paying for a lot of this (I think). Don't take advice from me on this, but my impression is that the screeding is the easy bit compared to the laying. Jenna/Nick have applied self level over the whole floor before the herringbone, if you already have a sound concrete floor do you need anything more than self level?

If you are interested in DIYing herringbone you might be interested in watching Jenna Phipps and how she and her partner Nick (it's mostly Nick doing the floor) have done it. There's multiple videos but this one highlights the issue @markc mentioned though in their case they noticed the problem and corrected for it. These videos make very clear that to get a good result you need an eye for detail and lots and lots of patience.

One of the issues with the 5A sockets is you have to fit the plugs. Lots of people may be put off by doing that. Maybe in your house you are comfortable doing it but your partner isn't, this could cause issues as you age/are temporarily unavailable/unable. Who wants to call an electrician so you can put the new light you just purchased where you want it? Once the 5A plug is fitted the light is restricted to just the 5A outlets, this elminates the possibility of temporarily moving a light to another spot for whatever reason (party, another light failed and you want to move one while you get a replacement, you are working in a normally darker area and need the extra light temporarily). On the plus side, 5A plugs may limit kids ability to mess around with these things if you are in that situation.

Right, but I didn't draw where the ceiling was

You are just guessing. Remember all the M5 Ultras with 256GB for the next year were likely ordered last year. The lead time for this stuff is huge. It's not made on demand like Dell putting DIMMS in your custom PC order.

The argument has been we've been moving up the value chain. But not sure that holds. Brexit has done a number on manufacturing (which was previously tightly integrated with EU supply chain) and the previous low cost producer is now galloping up the value chain: https://www.ft.com/content/7d51a630-a3de-4cc7-9f5f-0f3e7f0d305a?syn-25a6b1a6=1 (I looked at doing a gift link but looks like with my subscription I can only share to individuals - no point sharing it on a forum). Having said that, the problems we have in this country are far deeper than energy. Solving energy doesn't solve industry and solving industry does not require solving energy (except in some limited high energy cases). Yep. Covering factory roofs in solar panels + batteries could be a huge boon if properly marketed. One of those things that hasn't happened to the degree it should have. Though the government shouldn't fund subsidies as it should be a cost benefit to the companies, but marketing it and maybe lower cost loans to fund it should be something the government is doing. (yes low cost loans is a subsidy but relatively limited compared to other renewable incentives).

Just to add, I think this would work fairly well on walls with a service cavity (ie, external walls). Doesn't work so well on internal walls (as Nick suggested). Still not really come up with a flexible solution I'm happy with there.

A crude diagram of how I would plan my formed tray as @andyscotland describes. If you have wall sconces, provisions for motorised blinds, etc, you could run either horizontal (blue) or vertical (green) zones around them (obv need to place a socket/switch somewhere in line to produce a safe zone). The other thing I currently plan to do is to place way more metal backboxes than I plan to expose (always pairing a double with a single for data/etc). Use shallow ones so that you can put plasterboard on top of them. Then use a router to cut out access on the ones you need. Americans seem to use this technique a lot (without the unused spares) and it looks like it makes putting up plasterboard a lot quicker. Plan would be to then add metal backbox extenders onto the exposed ones to make them into deep boxes. The unused ones remain buried ready to be exposed if needed in future. This does require some careful thought, I'd want to be able to remove the backboxes to access cables behind and also want to be able to easily find buried ones (so maybe need to make a filler of some kind with some cheap magnets attached so that you can pass a template over the wall and it registers the exact location from the finished surface).

Agree with this for installed fittings. Just think the 5A sockets, fixed positions and extra wiring effort is unnessary these days. Future buyer of property is not going to make any purchasing decisions based off having 5A sockets (and will they necessarily be in the right place for them anyway?). Absolutely.

Don't have a source but I'm pretty sure I remember the last government had to implement various incentives for the last big round to go ahead. Things like reducing the provisions that need to be made to clean up after the rigs are done, tax breaks. I'm not sure what the current situation is but while I don't have huge problems with new licences if they are purely at the companies risk I would have problem with any sort of subsidy direct or indirect. Any public funds put into energy independence should go on renewables as that is the most cost effective option at this point.

Im not sure how a cable tray helps you run additional cables later. The ties for the cables and all the perferations will present more snag challenges for pulling cables behind plasterboard than bare trunking or similar. I too want to be able to add additional cables later (especially low voltage/data/hdmi/etc) and am curious what other people think is the best way to go but personally don't think cable trays would help. My best guess at the minute for how to do this is to form two parallel cable paths horizontally along the wall behind the sockets with the metal back boxes mounted in front. Depth is a bit of an issue though. 50mm cavity + plasterboard on top is ok. Less seems to get tricky. Main reason for me to want this ability if I get a chance to build I want to get the basics in and done and then come back and be able to fit 'smart' stuff in a suitable way without ripping up the walls. I don't really want to have to plan where every device cable goes (and what type is needed) before being able to crack on with the rest of the property.

Definitely the way to go if you want to control an outlet from a light switch hard wired. But with todays 'smart' products it seems a somewhat unnecessary complication. Even if you don't want smart stuff anywhere else, wiring it into free standing lamps and a switch on the wall to control them gives you a lot more flexibility. ie, you can move lamps around, add extras, etc, no need to predetermine locations or run special cables. It doesn't even have to be that smart if you just want on/off. Quinetic switches are an option there https://www.quinetic.co.uk/