SimonD

Yes, it's a rather huge and complex area right now, and even more so that when we saw similar patterns during the dotcom boom. The only difference being that a vast amount of money being ploughed in is from cash rich tech hegemonies. But I also see a play out of the worrying trends of laziness/sloppiness in development, which I think is perpetuated by poor implementation of project management approaches like Agile where they end up tacking crap onto existing crap foundations rather than re-think and rebuild. But also we see really poor UX/UI development nowadays and pushing system testing out onto users. This is exactly what's causing some of the issues you mention above. But in a slightly ironic way, the supply chain problems and costs associated with the large scale LLM implementations are perhaps making the industry think a bit harder about memory use, something that's largely been ignored for the last few decades. But I suppose the more insidious issue is that of control. I prefer to think about it as regulation rather than control, because despite all the negative talk out there, there's a huge amount of positives this technology can bring. It just needs to be reigned in a bit but also actually understood properly by those tasked with the regulation. I don't envy those having to look at it and make these decisions, particularly with the speed it's going. What I don't want to see is a bunch of knee jerk quick pieces of legislation to deal with isolated events which we seem to be seeing more and more of in politics more widely.

That's what I used to do too, but what is it about people picking up and using buckets? Our gardener did this the other day. I had 2 buckets outside the front door for plastering and then found one of them later in the day filled with crap from the gardening exercise. He used it even though it was stacked together with another bucket that had the plastering tools in it!

If you asked Grok, it'll probably tell you this year, just like the self-driving taxis for the last what 10 years? Personally I think the whole AGI thing depends on what you consider to be intelligence - if it's the kind of intelligence that's displayed by a large proportion of leaders in the tech world, then maybe. If it's considered to be merely acting at the level of concept & proposition, then perhaps also so, but as intelligence also encompasses navigation and manipulating one's physical environment, all the computing power of all data centres in the world combined couldn't manage it successfully. And this is where it all falls down because we actually don't possess the knowledge to build systems that are efficient enough to properly act in the real world and make necessary decisions to successfully navigate it without unimaginable computing power - and this problem resides in our basic understanding in neuroscience which is stuck in the world of computational analogy and dominance of a constructionist view of the brain - e.g. we 'construct' reality in our brains based upon meaningless stimulus and therefore the world we see isn't really the world.

You are going to gasp in horror, but this is my absolute favourite tool storage box (now bear in mind they're being used almost on a daily basis). It's something that does just work. https://hultafors.com/en-gb/products/tool-bucket It's been so popular, they now sell a tool organiser to go in the bucket. I have 6 of these buckets 😲 I've even had customer say what a good idea as their other trades are coming in and out with loads of boxes. For example, one of mine just has the drill/driver/screwdrivers with bit sets and a drill roll, the other with have the sds & multi-tool etc. While I'm working away I'll have an empty one where I throw bits of rubbish as I go, including pipe off cuts, old screws etc. and then it's brilliant for the odd emergency when I'm removing old pipework where I can grab the bucket to collect the always expected run out of water from said pipework.

Welcome to the club - you're embarking on a serious n+1 journey here. There will always be another tool you need, of course! Again, depending on exactly what you're going to end up doing, here's a list of priorities: 1. as you've already realised - drill/driver 18V 2. maybe an impact driver - I say this because I'm in the trade and despite doing lots of work with a wide variety of materials, I hardly ever touch my impact driver any more. This is for several reasons; a) noise, b) control when you want a good finish, c) a decent drill driver with a torque limiter will do 95% of what an impact driver will do. I currently just have a 10 year old cheap Erbauer impact driver that sits there for the odd thing - like driving in a bolt into concrete, or 5-6mm dia 150mm screws into timber. 3. if you're planning on lots of smaller jobs like building a kitchen and even driving plasterboard screws etc. a smaller 12v screwdriver - I use one of these for about 60% of all drill/driver work and have one with multiple heads for bits and drills and an angles driver bits for good reach into cupboards. 4. sds drill for masonry 5. multitool - these things are just the best and most versatile of tools, almost a must have (I have a particular 18v Bosch version which has the lowest vibration levels in the industry and so is a pleasure to use) After this you're looking at the various saws etc. but that's another story entirely. What I have are 2 18v Bosch professional drill/drivers, one of which is 12 years old still going strong as are the original batteries that still fit all the newer tools (always check backward compatibility with manufacturers and their battery systems) - one will have drill bits, the other hole saws and sometimes changed out for heavy duty screwdriver jobs. I then have a 12v Bosch professional one with the multi attachments but mostly used as a screwdriver. Then I have a big 18v Bosch professional sds drill and a Bosch Professional multi-tool. These are the ones that are always to hand. All of these are running on either 2ah or 5ah batteries that are now at least 6 years old up to more than 10 years old. The only problem I've had with any of these tools is when I was drilling a steel beam and some metal swarf got sucked into the motor of the older brushed drill/driver and it cut out a few time randomly and then it's fine again. For whatever reason some people seem to dislike Bosch but I've had Bosch Professional stuff for more than 25 years and never has one of their tools died on me or caused me a problem yet. Can't say the same for some Milwaukee tools I tried just 3 years ago except for the little mini disk cutter which has been absolutely fabulous.

https://www.travisperkins.co.uk/land-drain-and-ducting/wavincoil-land-drain-pipe-coil-100mm-x-25m/p/711879 or

First things first - what jobs are you looking for the drill to do?

Yes, there's definitely been some big changes over the last few months. It seems to have been exponential and the quality of output and reasoning is noticeable. Prompting though I still really key. I did a comparison last week with my son who'd put in a prompt and received some fairly generic stuff back. I sat down and wrote a prompt and he was taken aback by how long and detailed the prompt was compared to his. Then he was blown away by the output compared to what he had received. I actually ask the AI to create prompts for me or guide me in how best to structure prompt based on what I want and like @Pocster experiences, the output can be like night and day. Often just writing my prompts takes much longer than the thinking and generating the output.

Not at all, I'm focussed on using the most effective tool that requires the least amount of effort to get what I what done, working how I want it to work and it's reliable without too many bugs - and it can be maintained with minimal input, including completing regular security reviews of the implementation and doing what's necessary to lock it down. Now what I love about it is that quite regularly Claude has the audacity to add surprising things and functionality I hadn't thought about, making things even better that I'd asked! I can hardly contain my excitement about this too. No more brain hurt and squiffy eyes at 3am. And gets bigger all the time, I hope. Totally agree. I was listening to an AI podcast the other day and was surprised about the discussion talking about small scale efficient models running on very little computing power. The really interesting thing was that the guy (one of the gurus of our time in this field) was saying that the focus of the big data centre huge resource hungry things is more about stroking egos and the assumption that everything has to be bigger and better and more powerful all the time. It's a specific design decision rather than a necessity.

I know why you want to avoid the cloud, but for a little compromise and a good few grand saved, I have to say that Claude Code is probably at the front right now. Have you tried it? I've tried Deepseek, which is pretty bloody amazing too but the way that Claude can build an entire stack, spit out all the relevant code in files, plus the debugging capability just has me flawed. The other advantage is persistent memory across conversations and chat history, including file retrieval - so you can put in all your skills and provide a context that gets updated as you work. Deepseek gets a bit of a pain because as soon as you notice the context memory starting to degrade, you've got to create a new prompt with current context and paste it into a new chat. Really don't get on with ChatGPT. Last summer when I was designing a DB schema and doing it the good old fashioned way with manual normalisation etc. it was just taking forever. Put my requirements in along with a decent prompt and it spat out the schema in about 3 minutes including all the relationships keys and foreign keys in an svg too, plus it then writes all the sql. What's amazing is then how it points you to tools available and takes you through how to integrate and implement them you'd never have heard about without weeks of trawling various tech sites. It is absolutely incredible. Do you not find that you still have to do a little stitching in of code and a little nudging for debugging though? So you need to make sure the code is properly commented - that's been the thing with Claude for me is that it makes sure the necessary commenting is in there - Deepseek stitching in was a bit more painful as the line numbers it gave me were always quite a way off, well actually a lot as I still have a 3/4 finished app on there and I can't quite face going back to resolve the bugs right now. But I think with all these tools, you still have to properly keep them on track as they do tend to forget stuff and when you're dealing with mathematics and especially applied physics, you've got to be very careful.

Global radiator library now added which include Stelrad classic compact catalogue and Kartell K-Rad Kompact - all from K1/Type 11 to K3 Type 33. More to come from other manufacturers.

I bough one of these when we started the built. On mine the sides and front fold down flat for extra carrying capacity. Can't believe how useful it's been:

Of course there will be a lack of design experience as the ducting design is an HVAC solution, piped fan coils to each room are not. And of course, this then needs to be integrated with any MVHR system to provide sufficient cooling and heating flow rates which ventilation alone will probably not. The problem is one for ventilation designers, not just an ASHP installer. So here we've got the crossover in relevant trades.

Ducting runs? What kind of fan coils? Should be water connections and a condensate drain.

When you say you have gone through this with the builder, who is doing the heating system design and installation? Is it someone sub-contracted by the builder you don't know or is it someone you have brought in yourself? I'd like to understand the rationale and figures they've provided. The only significant price differences should lie in the heat generator & cylinder specifications, so time to do some digging for real world data.