It's probably not a necessity - I'm sure I could adapt to just using my smartphone if I put the time into learning some of the math apps. I still use my ti-89 for everyday calculations. It's a handy device; more portable than a laptop, and better UI than a smartphone. I don't deny myself from using a tool I like.
I'm much younger than you, but I had the experience of having a difficult-to-find-info-on-the-internet subject for a high school paper, and the opporunity to researching the subject at a well stocked library. There was a lot of friction to the process that I wasn't used to, but the serendipity aspect was absolutely revelatory. There is something fundamentally unfiltered about walking past shelves of books with titles on subjects you never even knew existed.
Yes, look up videos of recurring vibration issues. It has become bad because international suppliers cut them off due to geopolitical concerns. There is lots of censorship locally in China on this and similar topics like construction problems with property. But some of it has leaked out anyways. It’s very different from when HSR first launched there.
I've had multiples of my students get into legal trouble over the years from using these. Just understand that almost all of these professional level software packages phone home even after being cracked, so you basically have to airgap your computer if you use them. It's a major reason why I steer them towards open source CAD packages, and towards the pro level CAD packages with usable free hobby licensing.
The current collector also takes up relatively more volume, on top of the packaging (the wall thickness would be the same, and it's not a trivial part of the volume of small cell batteries).
I've been a Mechanical Engineer for a similar length of time, using Solidworks and Creo, and I concur. I've released many thousands of parts over the course of my career, and I don't think of the modeling itself as a major time sink (provided you have some decent training, and are using a thoughtful approach and not fighting the software). If the AI copilot could actually do all the modeling based on prompts, that would be pretty interesting, especially if it could create a feature try that I could tweak.
Automatic drafting is something that I think might be a good target for doing some AI research on. Your prompt exists in the form of the solid model, and it's feature tree and parameters. The output is the lay out views and annotations. It's okay if the output isn't perfect, as I would expect to be reviewing it and doing some tweaks.
Helping with all of the ERP processes involved with releasing and maintaining engineering documentation would be a HUGE time saver. If I could ask a copilot program to start a change request, and give it some basic descriptions of what I'm changing, it would be massively helpful if it could start pulling relevant files, and auto-filling the right requests/forms/whatever to do that process.
Hey! We're building this. It's a workflow driven automated documentation system for engineers based on your document templates. We started in energy and have expanded into engineering services. Would love your feedback.
fast-draft.ai
Please, please send me an email or dm if you are interested.
I've always wondered that too. In very quiet rooms I hear quite intense ringing. I have distinct memories as a young child of wanting a fan turned on in my bedroom at night because of the sound of silence was ringing. It seems like what people describe as tinnitus, but... I don't seem to have any of the hearing loss that is always described as causing tinnitus. I can quite clearly high pitched noises such as CRT monitors and ultrasonic mosquito repellent. I don't have a history of working with loud equipment or going to concerts, and in any case that doesn't explain why I would hear it in childhood. It all doesn't quite correspond with with a lot of the causes and symptoms I hear described.
Here's an anecdote: I haven't been the victim of any type of crime for the last 15 years, whereas I had multiple break-ins and near violent encounters in the 00s and 90s. My neighborhood and city (I live in Northeast Minneapolis) feels dramatically safer than it did when I was younger. My relatives in the burbs think it's some sort of crime infested hellhole. I'm inclined to think that a actually, crime IS dropping and that people who think that it isn't watching and reading a lot of media that is filling their heads with nonsense.