From what absolutely little I know, yes. Sustaining the reaction at such high temps for long is, as of now, difficult.

when talking about fusion, just think the conditions of stars/the sun. In order to function correctly, it has to be ridiculously hot.

The race for fusion is how to maintain it, and eventually have a net positive transaction of energy out, to energy in ratio.

Hotter than yo mama …. Wait a minute

If Icarus won't come to the sun, the sun will come to Icarus.

I just want to know what kind of thermometer they put into the plasma to measure the temperature. It must have been made of ice or something to not burn up.

The power of the sun, in the palm of my hand.

...Icarus was a primitive savage from ancient times...he didn't have our cool cyberpunk tech

Currently reading news and communicating with people around the world from the privacy of my toilet using my hand terminal. It can also understand what I am saying and excecute my spoken commands (to some extent at least). That's some Sci fi shit right there. Pun intended

Last one I read about is just constantly and very quickly (far quicker than human abilities) adjust the magnetic field around the plasma in order to keep it stable and in place. They've been (or at least one team was) using AI to go over data and control and predict the field adjustments, because only reacting after the plasma starts to move hasn't been quick enough.

(The article touches on this bit a little) I was watching something about fusion the other day and it seems that it is super tricky to keep the magnetic field balanced in a way that keeps the plasma in a proper toroid. Not only does it need to keep the correct strength, it has to fight against random turbulence. This is critical to start the reaction, but also to maintain it.

Also, they gave some other physical limitations in the article as well:

To extend their plasma's burning time from the previous record-breaking run, the scientists tweaked aspects of their reactor's design, including replacing carbon with tungsten to improve the efficiency of the tokamak’s "divertors," which extract heat and ash from the reactor.

Basically, it's the container that has limitations as containing a pseudo-sun probably isn't easy.

Like it has been for the past 30 years (which, I assume, was the joke here.)

If fusion research was funded adequately we'd probably have it by now, but I don't know if it's the energy lobby or what that means that it's chronically underfunded. An actually working fusion reactor design would bring about such an upheaval in the energy markets that I wouldn't be surprised if plutocrats had a hand in making sure the research receives orders of magnitude less money than it should.

Breakthroughs will bring in investment and then things can accelerate if it ends up viable.

So no chipmunk voices? 😢

I can’t wait for the billionaires to increase our power bills for this.

Yes yes I know it would be cheaper, but billionaires are going to charge more money even though it’s costing them less.

You know, not everything has to be "eat the rich".

This could just be a really neat science article/discussion about a fusion test, and have no need to bring up Capitalism.

The constant complaining just gets old after a while. Be focused, if you want to be listen to, and taken seriously.