Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And how the tech are you Today? Is Thursday, February twenty two. Let us get to the tech news. Should be a nice quake episode today. And by now, I'm sure you've all heard how Mark Zuckerberg has gifted his underlings I'm sorry, peons, I'm sorry employees with a new designation. Yes, they are called meta mats. Now thanks, I hate it. He also said that a new corporate value for the company goes something like this meta meta mates me, which means that employees should think about what's important in that order, namely, first comes the company, then come the co workers, then comes yourself. And I just want to say, that's kind of messed up. All right, It's it's Jonathan soapbox time. You all get out the popcorn. We're gonna go early today. So you have likely heard the phrase the show must go on, which is an old theater phrase and it's toxic as all get out. So let me explain. The phrase suggests that the most important element here is the show that the show is more important than the people who are involved in making the show happen. So if you are a performer and you're sick or you're hurt, you gotta suck it up because the show must go on. The show is way more important than your personal health and well being. And if you happen to have the temerity to think that your own welfare is at least as important as the show, then you are an egomaniacal diva. Well I've got news for you. All actors are egomaniacal divas. We just are. It's just the ones who value their own welfare can often be portrayed as being the real jerks. Now, to be fair, some of them are real jerks. Some of them go beyond valuing their welfare and they think that the world revolves around them. But that's beside the point anyway. I feel this show must go on. Mentality has kind of benefited organizations at the cost of their own employees health and wellness for like ever, and I don't think that's a good mindset. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that meta mates is an awful thing to call here employees that seems dehumanizing to me, maybe because I'm still reeling from Meta's commercial during the Super Bowl, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised. So I think we could say that the spirit of the message is that an organization really only succeeds if the people who are working in that organization are working together toward a common goal, and that if everyone had a more kind of self centered approach, then nothing would get accomplished. And I can get behind that. I can understand that the idea that, hey, this enterprise only works if we all work together. I get that. It's just that this particular phrasing doesn't read that way to me. It almost sounds more like this is what's important, and you are like third on the list. Yuck. Earlier this week, I talked about how research shows a significant percentage of hacker activity originates out of Russia. No big surprise there. Well, yesterday, the US intelligence community published an alert saying that Russian hackers have been compromising defense contractors and subcontractors in an effort to steal information regarding US defenses. The alert said that a pattern of regular targeting of these companies dates back to at least January twenty twenty, and according to the alert, the data in question relates to quote US weapons platforms, development and deployment timelines, vehicle specifications, and plans for communications, infrastructure, and information technology end quote. That is really bad news for the United States. And I'm definitely not surprised at this thing, at the fact that Russia has been targeting those systems. Cyber warfare is just a fact of life right now. Also, I can guarantee you that the United States is trying and potentially succeeding at doing the exact same thing to Russia. We just don't hear about that typically, But I I would be shocked to learn that we don't have anything related to those kinds of activities going on here in the States. The upsetting thing is hearing how these attacks have actually been effective, because a lot of them apparently are using bay sick tactics that could easily be defeated with just the bare minimum amount of attention and care. Stuff that folks should be aware of by now, Like spear phishing attempts. You know what phishing attempts are. That's when someone's trying to trick you into giving up information. Spear Fishing is a little bit more targeted, right, You are using what you know about your target to improve the chances of fooling them into giving you information. And you would think that defense contractors would have a pretty good process to identify and prevent that kind of thing from happening. But I guess it just proves that people continue to be the weakest link in any security system. Uh So we won't have a perfect information security system until we get rid of people, I guess, is what I'm saying, Not that I want to get rid of people. That kind of ends up making the whole thing moot. If you live in an apartment in the United States, well, the fc CE just gave you more options when it comes to Internet service providers. And here's the sitch. Sometimes landlords someone who owns a multi tenant building of some sort, they will make a sweetheart deal with a specific Internet service provider and that makes that I s P the only provider for that building. So anyone living inside the building has no choice when it comes to an I s P. They either pay for service from that one provider that the landlord made an agreement with, or they have to go without internet service. Now, technically this was already against the rules in the United States, but there were various loopholes that landlords and I s p s could use to assentially ignore the rules. Now the f c C, which is the Federal Communications Commission, has passed a four to zero vote to close those loopholes. That is awesome, particularly since the CC currently has an equal split of Democrat and Republican reps sitting at it. So it's very rare to find a topic where both of those parties will actually align and support it in an a unanimous vote. That like never happens, So that's nice. And uh, you know, there's still one empty seat on the f c C. That's something that a lot of people are kind of irritated about because they would love to see the FCC at full operation, particularly because that would mean you would have a tie breaking vote, a three to two vote, and uh, because we're talking about a democratic administration, it would mean a Democrat sitting at that extra seat, but that has not been filled as of yet. Anyway, the hope is that now these loopholes have been closed and competing I s p s will be able to get access to those buildings that previously had been off limits. To them and tenants or choices when it comes to choosing an internet service provider, and here in America, a lot of places have very limited options when it comes to internet service. For example, at my home in the city of Atlanta, I essentially have two broadband options for cable based internet, and then one other one if I wanted satellite and to have the slowest internet ever, Folks who live in apartments typically don't even get that limited amount of choice. So here's hoping this means we're going to see a big change for people who are living in apartment buildings and such, though there are several consumer advocacy groups that are saying we're likely to see more loopholes pop up, and what we really need is a full FCC that is capable of taking larger steps towards preventing that practice from continuing. Well, we all know that meta slash Facebook has been hurt pretty badly by Apple's changed to iOS. That is that Apple gave iOS users the opportunity to opt out of app tracking or app based tracking, and that meant that iPhone owners and alike could decide to not feed into Facebook's tried and true method of gobbling up user data to aid in its business of targeted advertising. So the company reportedly lost out on like ten billion dollars of revenue last year because of this change to iOS. Well, now Alphabet slash Google is following suit. The company announced yesterday that it is updating its own policies that would restrict how apps can share user data with third parties. But Alphabet's approach is going to be a little bit different. In fact, in the announcement, there is a passage that reads, quote, other platforms have taken a different approach to ads privacy, bluntly restricting existing technologies used by developers and advertisers. End quote. I put the sas in that, But no, there's sass there. It looks like it's targeting Apple, saying Apples using a hammer instead of say, a scalpel. So Google's approach will allow for some sort of wiggle room, it seems. And the company has also said it's not going to implement these changes for another two years, and that will give developers and advertisers time to prepare for that and to create new plans and strategies. So it doesn't sound like it's going to be quite as severe a change as Apple's approach, but it can still pose a threat to revenue for companies like Meta down the line. Okay, we've got some more news stories to cover before we get to those, Let's take a quick break. Hi. Are you Canadian or do you use a Canadian bank? No, this isn't an ad this is this is a news story. If you are a Canadian or use a Canadian bank, you might have been experiencing some pretty rough issues with your bank recently. Uh So, yesterday on Wednesday, online services went down for five major banks in Canada, including the Royal Bank of Canada. Customers found it impossible to perform by sick tasks like e transfers and mobile banking, and there were reports of people being unable to pay for purchases at the point of sale due to this outage. It happened yesterday evening, and as of this recording, there has not yet been an explanation as to what happened. Uh and in some cases it sounds like services are continuing to be disrupted. Uh. There is some speculation about what happened, but since that speculation lacks any evidence as of the time I'm recording this, I'm not going to talk about it until we learn more. We have seen big outages and services father online stuff before, but it's is unusual to see something that's specifically affecting a single sector banking in this case, and stretching across multiple institutions, which is pretty freaky. I'll be sure to follow up on this once we know more about what is going on. In the state of California, lawmakers are working on legislation that would put tighter restrictions on how big tech companies in the state can collect and use children's personal information. Uh It's modeled after a similar code in the UK, and the California proposal would mean that big tech companies like Meta and Alphabet would have to limit how much data they collect from young users and restrict their use of targeted advertising to kids and prevent them from using various tricks to tempt kids, to sidestep privacy protections, and also to knockoff location tracking for children within the state. And we've seen kind of a general move towards raining in big text influence over the last couple of years, particularly when it comes to how tech can impact children. In fact, that's the surface level reason the earn It Act is going through the U. S. Senate. I talked about earn it earlier this week and how that legislation, if passed into law, could be a death sentence for end to end encrypted communication here in the United States. I would say earn it is a bad approach to trying to protect kids. But these restrictions, you know, limiting how companies can collect information and what they can do with it, that seems like a pretty good step to me. On a national In the United States, senators have introduced the Kids Online Safety Act. This legislation is meant to counteract the harmful effects certain online platforms seem to have on children. You might remember the big story of the Facebook leak last year, and that internal documents from Facebook indicated that folks at Meta you know, the parent company, are aware of the harmful effects that platforms like Instagram can have on some users, particularly young girls and young women. That's the sort of thing this Act is meant to target the risk that platforms could contribute to serious mental health issues like eating disorders, substance abuse, and even suicide. The Act calls for platforms that could be quote reasonably likely to be used in quote by people under the age of sixteen to institute more protections so that those users aren't presented with images and posts that promote things that can be harmful to mental health. The Act calls for platforms to institute limits that would prevent people from specifically seeking out younger users, and it would also restrict how much data the platforms could collect from younger users, similar to the California proposal we just talked about. Also, the Act would require platforms to make restricted settings the default, and that is a big deal. I think a lot of platforms try to skirt issues with having their data tracking abilities restricted by making those opt out choices rather than opt in choices, like you opt out of having your data tracked, and some go a step further and they bury in the opt out settings deep in the menu, so they make it really unlikely that the majority of people are actually going to go hunting for the setting to turn off data tracking, so the access you can't do that there. The opt out has to be the default. You have to opt into having things tracked. And uh. The Act also doesn't have a size requirement as far as the companies go. That doesn't matter how big or small the platform is. If it is reasonably likely to be used by children, the law will apply to that platform. So a lot of other laws tend to have like a restriction that say you have to have a certain number of users for you to be held accountable to that law. That's not the case here. And of course this is not a law yet. It will have to pass a vote in both the Senate and the House and get approved by the President before that happens, and it is quite possible that it could be changed significantly before it gets to that point, or it could just die on the floor. A lot of legislation does. The website Motherboard recently received a recording said to be from a mandatory anti union meeting held in Amazon's JFK eight warehouse up in New York. That's the warehouse that initially failed to get enough signatures to force a union vote last year, but now is back on track and got the signatures and now it's going to hold a vote. So at this mandatory meeting, a representative laid out the supposed risks involved if workers were to sign to join a union. You might remember that Amazon employees at a warehouse in Alabama held a union vote that failed, but then the National Labor Relations Board or in l r B, gave them a do over after the n l RB concluded that Amazon the company had interfered with the union election process in an effort to prevent a union from forming, well actively discouraging employees by threatening them, in this case, by suggesting that they could see a reduction in wages if they joined a union and implying that there could be no limit to how high union dues would be. That kind of falls into that category too. And if this recording is in fact legitimate, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, it could really be a massive blow against Amazon. The vote on whether or not to unionize should happen late next month, so we'll keep an eye on this story to see where it goes. And finally, there's a really cool article and Wired titled deep mind has trained an AI to control nuclear your fusion that I recommend you check out if you're interested in stuff like fusion, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. I'll give the highlights, but seriously, you should read the article if you can. So. First, nuclear fusion is the process by which you release energy by fusing two atoms together to make a heavier atom. This is the nuclear process that takes place in stars like the Sun. If we could create a nuclear reactor capable of holding sustained fusion reactions, we could revolutionize how we generate an access energy. Uh, build a few of those working fusion reactors, and you would solve energy crises around the world. Plus you wouldn't have to worry about dangerous radioactive waste the way you have to do with nuclear fission reactors. Fission is the type of nuclear power we rely on now. That's when you take a heavy atom and you split it up and you release energy in the process. But I don't know if you've noticed, things are a little different here on Earth than they are on the Sun. We don't have the intense heat and we don't have the incredible gravitational forces that you would find on the Sun. So it is very challenging to push tiny atoms together with enough energy to get them to fuse. So a lot of our fusion work has been a net loss, where we're pouring more energy into making the reaction happen, then we're getting out of the reaction itself. So the way we push atoms together, since we don't have that incredible gravitational force of the sun is we use powerful magnetic fields, and if we could control these magnetic fields more precisely and efficiently, we could potentially make massive improvements towards sustained fusion reactions. This is where deep mind is coming in. Deep Mind emerged from Google's secret R and D division years ago, and it focuses primarily on machine learning. So the task at hand was teaching an AI computer system how to control a complicated series of magnets to manipulate a magnetic field in such a way to get the optimal result in a plasma that contains fusing atoms. Like I said, this is just a highlight of what is covered in the article. It is fascinating stuff and it could end up being a significant step toward making fusion go from science fiction to reality eventually. So check out that article. And that's it for the news for Thursday, February two. If you have any suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. Handle is text stuff hs W I'll talk to you again, really sick. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And how the tech are you Today? Is Thursday, February twenty two. Let us get to the tech news. Should be a nice quake episode today. And by now, I'm sure you've all heard how Mark Zuckerberg has gifted his underlings I'm sorry, peons, I'm sorry employees with a new designation. Yes, they are called meta mats. Now thanks, I hate it. He also said that a new corporate value for the company goes something like this meta meta mates me, which means that employees should think about what's important in that order, namely, first comes the company, then come the co workers, then comes yourself. And I just want to say, that's kind of messed up. All right, It's it's Jonathan soapbox time. You all get out the popcorn. We're gonna go early today. So you have likely heard the phrase the show must go on, which is an old theater phrase and it's toxic as all get out. So let me explain. The phrase suggests that the most important element here is the show that the show is more important than the people who are involved in making the show happen. So if you are a performer and you're sick or you're hurt, you gotta suck it up because the show must go on. The show is way more important than your personal health and well being. And if you happen to have the temerity to think that your own welfare is at least as important as the show, then you are an egomaniacal diva. Well I've got news for you. All actors are egomaniacal divas. We just are. It's just the ones who value their own welfare can often be portrayed as being the real jerks. Now, to be fair, some of them are real jerks. Some of them go beyond valuing their welfare and they think that the world revolves around them. But that's beside the point anyway. I feel this show must go on. Mentality has kind of benefited organizations at the cost of their own employees health and wellness for like ever, and I don't think that's a good mindset. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that meta mates is an awful thing to call here employees that seems dehumanizing to me, maybe because I'm still reeling from Meta's commercial during the Super Bowl, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised. So I think we could say that the spirit of the message is that an organization really only succeeds if the people who are working in that organization are working together toward a common goal, and that if everyone had a more kind of self centered approach, then nothing would get accomplished. And I can get behind that. I can understand that the idea that, hey, this enterprise only works if we all work together. I get that. It's just that this particular phrasing doesn't read that way to me. It almost sounds more like this is what's important, and you are like third on the list. Yuck. Earlier this week, I talked about how research shows a significant percentage of hacker activity originates out of Russia. No big surprise there. Well, yesterday, the US intelligence community published an alert saying that Russian hackers have been compromising defense contractors and subcontractors in an effort to steal information regarding US defenses. The alert said that a pattern of regular targeting of these companies dates back to at least January twenty twenty, and according to the alert, the data in question relates to quote US weapons platforms, development and deployment timelines, vehicle specifications, and plans for communications, infrastructure, and information technology end quote. That is really bad news for the United States. And I'm definitely not surprised at this thing, at the fact that Russia has been targeting those systems. Cyber warfare is just a fact of life right now. Also, I can guarantee you that the United States is trying and potentially succeeding at doing the exact same thing to Russia. We just don't hear about that typically, But I I would be shocked to learn that we don't have anything related to those kinds of activities going on here in the States. The upsetting thing is hearing how these attacks have actually been effective, because a lot of them apparently are using bay sick tactics that could easily be defeated with just the bare minimum amount of attention and care. Stuff that folks should be aware of by now, Like spear phishing attempts. You know what phishing attempts are. That's when someone's trying to trick you into giving up information. Spear Fishing is a little bit more targeted, right, You are using what you know about your target to improve the chances of fooling them into giving you information. And you would think that defense contractors would have a pretty good process to identify and prevent that kind of thing from happening. But I guess it just proves that people continue to be the weakest link in any security system. Uh So we won't have a perfect information security system until we get rid of people, I guess, is what I'm saying, Not that I want to get rid of people. That kind of ends up making the whole thing moot. If you live in an apartment in the United States, well, the fc CE just gave you more options when it comes to Internet service providers. And here's the sitch. Sometimes landlords someone who owns a multi tenant building of some sort, they will make a sweetheart deal with a specific Internet service provider and that makes that I s P the only provider for that building. So anyone living inside the building has no choice when it comes to an I s P. They either pay for service from that one provider that the landlord made an agreement with, or they have to go without internet service. Now, technically this was already against the rules in the United States, but there were various loopholes that landlords and I s p s could use to assentially ignore the rules. Now the f c C, which is the Federal Communications Commission, has passed a four to zero vote to close those loopholes. That is awesome, particularly since the CC currently has an equal split of Democrat and Republican reps sitting at it. So it's very rare to find a topic where both of those parties will actually align and support it in an a unanimous vote. That like never happens, So that's nice. And uh, you know, there's still one empty seat on the f c C. That's something that a lot of people are kind of irritated about because they would love to see the FCC at full operation, particularly because that would mean you would have a tie breaking vote, a three to two vote, and uh, because we're talking about a democratic administration, it would mean a Democrat sitting at that extra seat, but that has not been filled as of yet. Anyway, the hope is that now these loopholes have been closed and competing I s p s will be able to get access to those buildings that previously had been off limits. To them and tenants or choices when it comes to choosing an internet service provider, and here in America, a lot of places have very limited options when it comes to internet service. For example, at my home in the city of Atlanta, I essentially have two broadband options for cable based internet, and then one other one if I wanted satellite and to have the slowest internet ever, Folks who live in apartments typically don't even get that limited amount of choice. So here's hoping this means we're going to see a big change for people who are living in apartment buildings and such, though there are several consumer advocacy groups that are saying we're likely to see more loopholes pop up, and what we really need is a full FCC that is capable of taking larger steps towards preventing that practice from continuing. Well, we all know that meta slash Facebook has been hurt pretty badly by Apple's changed to iOS. That is that Apple gave iOS users the opportunity to opt out of app tracking or app based tracking, and that meant that iPhone owners and alike could decide to not feed into Facebook's tried and true method of gobbling up user data to aid in its business of targeted advertising. So the company reportedly lost out on like ten billion dollars of revenue last year because of this change to iOS. Well, now Alphabet slash Google is following suit. The company announced yesterday that it is updating its own policies that would restrict how apps can share user data with third parties. But Alphabet's approach is going to be a little bit different. In fact, in the announcement, there is a passage that reads, quote, other platforms have taken a different approach to ads privacy, bluntly restricting existing technologies used by developers and advertisers. End quote. I put the sas in that, But no, there's sass there. It looks like it's targeting Apple, saying Apples using a hammer instead of say, a scalpel. So Google's approach will allow for some sort of wiggle room, it seems. And the company has also said it's not going to implement these changes for another two years, and that will give developers and advertisers time to prepare for that and to create new plans and strategies. So it doesn't sound like it's going to be quite as severe a change as Apple's approach, but it can still pose a threat to revenue for companies like Meta down the line. Okay, we've got some more news stories to cover before we get to those, Let's take a quick break. Hi. Are you Canadian or do you use a Canadian bank? No, this isn't an ad this is this is a news story. If you are a Canadian or use a Canadian bank, you might have been experiencing some pretty rough issues with your bank recently. Uh So, yesterday on Wednesday, online services went down for five major banks in Canada, including the Royal Bank of Canada. Customers found it impossible to perform by sick tasks like e transfers and mobile banking, and there were reports of people being unable to pay for purchases at the point of sale due to this outage. It happened yesterday evening, and as of this recording, there has not yet been an explanation as to what happened. Uh and in some cases it sounds like services are continuing to be disrupted. Uh. There is some speculation about what happened, but since that speculation lacks any evidence as of the time I'm recording this, I'm not going to talk about it until we learn more. We have seen big outages and services father online stuff before, but it's is unusual to see something that's specifically affecting a single sector banking in this case, and stretching across multiple institutions, which is pretty freaky. I'll be sure to follow up on this once we know more about what is going on. In the state of California, lawmakers are working on legislation that would put tighter restrictions on how big tech companies in the state can collect and use children's personal information. Uh It's modeled after a similar code in the UK, and the California proposal would mean that big tech companies like Meta and Alphabet would have to limit how much data they collect from young users and restrict their use of targeted advertising to kids and prevent them from using various tricks to tempt kids, to sidestep privacy protections, and also to knockoff location tracking for children within the state. And we've seen kind of a general move towards raining in big text influence over the last couple of years, particularly when it comes to how tech can impact children. In fact, that's the surface level reason the earn It Act is going through the U. S. Senate. I talked about earn it earlier this week and how that legislation, if passed into law, could be a death sentence for end to end encrypted communication here in the United States. I would say earn it is a bad approach to trying to protect kids. But these restrictions, you know, limiting how companies can collect information and what they can do with it, that seems like a pretty good step to me. On a national In the United States, senators have introduced the Kids Online Safety Act. This legislation is meant to counteract the harmful effects certain online platforms seem to have on children. You might remember the big story of the Facebook leak last year, and that internal documents from Facebook indicated that folks at Meta you know, the parent company, are aware of the harmful effects that platforms like Instagram can have on some users, particularly young girls and young women. That's the sort of thing this Act is meant to target the risk that platforms could contribute to serious mental health issues like eating disorders, substance abuse, and even suicide. The Act calls for platforms that could be quote reasonably likely to be used in quote by people under the age of sixteen to institute more protections so that those users aren't presented with images and posts that promote things that can be harmful to mental health. The Act calls for platforms to institute limits that would prevent people from specifically seeking out younger users, and it would also restrict how much data the platforms could collect from younger users, similar to the California proposal we just talked about. Also, the Act would require platforms to make restricted settings the default, and that is a big deal. I think a lot of platforms try to skirt issues with having their data tracking abilities restricted by making those opt out choices rather than opt in choices, like you opt out of having your data tracked, and some go a step further and they bury in the opt out settings deep in the menu, so they make it really unlikely that the majority of people are actually going to go hunting for the setting to turn off data tracking, so the access you can't do that there. The opt out has to be the default. You have to opt into having things tracked. And uh. The Act also doesn't have a size requirement as far as the companies go. That doesn't matter how big or small the platform is. If it is reasonably likely to be used by children, the law will apply to that platform. So a lot of other laws tend to have like a restriction that say you have to have a certain number of users for you to be held accountable to that law. That's not the case here. And of course this is not a law yet. It will have to pass a vote in both the Senate and the House and get approved by the President before that happens, and it is quite possible that it could be changed significantly before it gets to that point, or it could just die on the floor. A lot of legislation does. The website Motherboard recently received a recording said to be from a mandatory anti union meeting held in Amazon's JFK eight warehouse up in New York. That's the warehouse that initially failed to get enough signatures to force a union vote last year, but now is back on track and got the signatures and now it's going to hold a vote. So at this mandatory meeting, a representative laid out the supposed risks involved if workers were to sign to join a union. You might remember that Amazon employees at a warehouse in Alabama held a union vote that failed, but then the National Labor Relations Board or in l r B, gave them a do over after the n l RB concluded that Amazon the company had interfered with the union election process in an effort to prevent a union from forming, well actively discouraging employees by threatening them, in this case, by suggesting that they could see a reduction in wages if they joined a union and implying that there could be no limit to how high union dues would be. That kind of falls into that category too. And if this recording is in fact legitimate, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, it could really be a massive blow against Amazon. The vote on whether or not to unionize should happen late next month, so we'll keep an eye on this story to see where it goes. And finally, there's a really cool article and Wired titled deep mind has trained an AI to control nuclear your fusion that I recommend you check out if you're interested in stuff like fusion, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. I'll give the highlights, but seriously, you should read the article if you can. So. First, nuclear fusion is the process by which you release energy by fusing two atoms together to make a heavier atom. This is the nuclear process that takes place in stars like the Sun. If we could create a nuclear reactor capable of holding sustained fusion reactions, we could revolutionize how we generate an access energy. Uh, build a few of those working fusion reactors, and you would solve energy crises around the world. Plus you wouldn't have to worry about dangerous radioactive waste the way you have to do with nuclear fission reactors. Fission is the type of nuclear power we rely on now. That's when you take a heavy atom and you split it up and you release energy in the process. But I don't know if you've noticed, things are a little different here on Earth than they are on the Sun. We don't have the intense heat and we don't have the incredible gravitational forces that you would find on the Sun. So it is very challenging to push tiny atoms together with enough energy to get them to fuse. So a lot of our fusion work has been a net loss, where we're pouring more energy into making the reaction happen, then we're getting out of the reaction itself. So the way we push atoms together, since we don't have that incredible gravitational force of the sun is we use powerful magnetic fields, and if we could control these magnetic fields more precisely and efficiently, we could potentially make massive improvements towards sustained fusion reactions. This is where deep mind is coming in. Deep Mind emerged from Google's secret R and D division years ago, and it focuses primarily on machine learning. So the task at hand was teaching an AI computer system how to control a complicated series of magnets to manipulate a magnetic field in such a way to get the optimal result in a plasma that contains fusing atoms. Like I said, this is just a highlight of what is covered in the article. It is fascinating stuff and it could end up being a significant step toward making fusion go from science fiction to reality eventually. So check out that article. And that's it for the news for Thursday, February two. If you have any suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. Handle is text stuff hs W I'll talk to you again, really sick. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.