TfNN headline news update Good afternoon everybody. I'm tell me O'Brien coming to you live from TfNN headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida 3 p.m. Eastern time on Friday final hour of the trading week and we got markets near session highs quite a day so far Dow Jones up 477 points trading at 26,974 got the S&P's positive by 50 points on the dot trading at 2988 Nasdaq positive by a hundred and fifty six points That's approaching a full two percent in the positive for the Nasdaq trading at eighty one oh six And how about the Russell more than two point five percent in the green up thirty seven points at fifteen twenty three I got up here to start things off How about the S&P been quite a forty eight hours you back things up to Wednesday after the close We got an initial spike to negative territory You have the S&P's at about six to seven p.m. Wednesday night trading at twenty eight eighty one and just like that We're more than a hundred S&P points above that price level There's Thursday's trading action higher and it just continued from the close of Thursday all day today 2988 approaching that high of twenty nine ninety four made it about eleven thirty a.m. This morning most of that having to do with renewed Optimism of u.s. China trade talks deals breaking in excuse me news breaking that a potential Partial trade deal reached this afternoon. We'll see how that plays out whether it's rhetoric or reality Nonetheless jumping over to the industry charts Dow thirty twenty six thousand nine thirty four We got a little bit of an intraday spike to a low of twenty six thousand seven forty nine And the market just shook it off coming right back up to near those highs we made earlier today Nasdaq 100 actually above those highs briefly right now 7904 pretty much right back at that level S&P's we looked at already your high earlier today of about twenty nine ninety four currently trading twenty nine eighty eight There's your crude oil chart making new highs as we speak Intraday highs that is Climbing almost a fifty five dollars will call it fifty four dollars and eighty cents and the gold contract pulling back a bit on renewed Market Optimism you have the gold contract trading at fourteen eighty seven forty six and the euro u.s. Dollar train at one ten Thirty-nine stay tuned folks. We got a treat. We got our man Larry Pezzavento filling in for Tom live at three o'clock He'll be coming up right now next and man. Oh man talk about those markets We also have the tenure sitting at at yield of one point seven five percent volatility everywhere folks stay tuned Larry Pezzavento coming up right now


So, so far we have discussed this F distributions, we talked about convergence of random variables and we talked about consistency and then talked about order statistics. In the last class, we talked about order statistics and discussed how to find distribution of an order statistic when it is discrete ok. We just said that let us say if my random variable is discrete that is it takes values in some finite set or some countable set, then if you are interested in knowing what is the smallest value, the distribution of the smallest value, distribution of the second smallest value, distribution of the second value or the distribution of the maximum value like that we discussed one way to find its distribution right. If you recall we defined some Bernoulli random variable, we took the summation and based on that we did some computations. So, that idea can be extended even when your random variable is continuous, I did not discuss that, but the expression of that expression for that is given in the slides and you people can verify how to get the expression by going through the computations yourself or refer to the book for the computations, all the computations are given in the book. So, today we will go ahead and just cover one more topic about generating random samples. So, this actually we already did right like this topic of generating random sample we have discussed earlier. Do anybody remember when was this? Yeah, we try to find samples or generate sample according to a given distribution using uniform samples by defining inverse of that given CDF function ok. Now, let us see if you can little go beyond that ok. So, on that front we are going to discuss two methods called direct and indirect method ok. So, direct method is what we already know. So, in direct method also there could be different possibilities and one possibility we already know. Suppose let us say I have been given x which is discrete or let us say x is continuous. Now, I have been asked to generate x such that it has CDF of f. Now, you know how to do this? You have to start with an uniform random variable and set your x to be f inverse of u. Once you do this you already know that x has a CDF of f right and this is the argument for that we have already discussed this ok. Next let us look into specific example. Suppose I have been told that I want to generate a random variable which follows exponential distribution with parameter lambda. So, for this I already know that the CDF I want is given by this expression right. Everybody agree that the CDF that I am interested is f of x equals to 1 minus e to the power lambda x right this is a CDF for my exponential distribution. Now, I need to define f inverse for this function ok. So, what is the f inverse for this function?  All you need to do is you just take it it becomes 1 minus u then the x that gives me this particular u is can be written as log of 1 by lambda with a minus. So, this will give me that x for which will give this particular value u that I am interested. So, now I know this is my inverse function.  If you take this we already know that this is going to follow exponential distribution with parameter lambda. Everybody agree that if I do like this it is going to give me this x if I do like this x is going to have exponential distribution with parameter lambda. So, by this what I mean here is what does this mean?  So, whatever the new samples I got x 1, x 2, x 100 they are following the exponential distribution with parameter lambda ok fine. So, exponential was simple. Now, let us see using this simple method what else we can generate? Let us see is it possible for us to generate gamma distribution with parameter n and lambda for some integer n and some nonzero value of lambda. Now, given that I know how to generate samples from exponential distribution just as we did in this example let us try to see that we can leverage this. So, I know something about exponential how to generate exponential distribution easily, but if I can do that maybe I should attempt to connect my gamma distribution with the exponential distributions and try to explore that relation ok. But we know that there exist a relation between gamma distribution and exponential distribution right. Suppose you have x 1, x 2, x n these are all IID exponential distribution with parameter lambda then we already know that their summation is gamma distributed with parameter n lambda. So, then what is one way to generate gamma distribution well order just generate n exponentially distributed random variable and then add then it will become a gamma, but to generate exponential distribution how I did I generated uniform distribution and then use it. So, I am going to just use this. So, use of this IID random variable first I am going to generate them following making them follow exponential distribution using my uniform random variables. So, I am going to generate uniform random variables u 1, u 2 up to u n and set x i equals to minus 1 by lambda log 1 minus u and I know that if I do like that x i is exponential distributed with parameter lambda and now I have this x i which are exponential distributed at lambda just add them then I am going to get this x to be gamma distributed. So, if I have to directly write this in terms of my uniform random variable I have to do is generate my uniform random variables and then add them after taking the log and doing by scaling with 1 minus lambda then whatever I get is directly gamma distributed with parameter n and lambda. You see that I am basically use I am playing around with the properties ok and then applying this functions of random variable properties to extract all this desired properties ok. Now, I know anybody has any question on how to generate this gamma distribution now ok. Now, once I know gamma maybe I can also go and generate a chi square distribution because gamma distribution and chi square distributions are related right. So, I know that chi square distribution with the 2 n degrees of freedom is nothing, but a gamma distribution with parameter n and half. So, to generate a gamma distribution with parameter n and half what should I do exponential with what parameter half. So, I need to generate n number of exponentially distributed random variable with parameter half and then simply add them that will directly give me chi square distribution. And now, such relations should be exploited to even generate other distributions. Let us suppose if you want to generate beta distributions with parameter m and n how you are going to do that? You again first explore the relation that x if I am going to take log of u i's where i is running from m that is basically what I am trying to do here is I am taking the average of 2 sums in the numerator I am taking the sum of m uniform random variable after applying the log function and then the denominator I am taking sum of all the m plus n uniform random variables after applying the log function. We know that if I do this transformation on the uniform random variable it is already beta distributed with parameter m and n. So, all you readily got like just directly by taking uniform random variable and applying this transformation you readily got beta distribution. Okay. So, this method is nice we are basically exploiting the fact that the relation between one distribution with the other and as long as we could represented one of them generate one of those random variables through uniform random variable like we are done because if it for example, here gamma distribution depends on exponential and I know how to generate exponential using uniform random variable right. So, you either gamma, chi square or beta everything can be generated using only uniform random variables and uniform is something simple which we can assume to be available to us and then just use these properties to get this distribution. But now is this trick works all the time? Maybe it may not work all the time one simple example I have given is if I want to generate let us say x is x 1 square where n is odd. Now in this case x 1 square is nothing, but gamma with what parameters n by 2 and this we know if I have to write it as a sum of exponential random variables I have to add n by 2 exponential but when n is odd can I do that? No right you cannot add 10 by 2 number of exponential random variables when n is odd. So, then that times this simple method does not work. Ok and yeah and what is the relation between chi square distribution and gamma distribution did we study that? Anybody recall what is the distribution between or like relation between Gaussian and chi square distribution? Ok I want to generate chi square distribution with one degrees of freedom. What is the relation between chi square distribution with one degrees of freedom and Gaussian distribution? This is this is normal with what? What parameters? Now see now this chi square distribution with one degrees of freedom I know that this I cannot generate with my gamma method because this degrees of freedom is odd. So, because of this I cannot even generate the Gaussian distribution in this case right. Is this clear to all of you? Ok now we need to overcome this what other methods we have. So, we will just explore one other direct method now. Ok by the way if you have to the previous methods the previous direct method we applied we always needed to do F inverse right. If you want to generate a X X according to which is has the CD of F then I needed to find I needed to set F equals to F inverse of U. So, you need to find what is that F inverse function, but always finding F inverse is not an easy task. Maybe something like exponential it was easy because of its simple structure.  How you are going to get? So, I want to find out if I want to invert if you give me U I need to find what is that X that will give me U when I apply F on X. So, for example, let us say U have been given to U and F is let us say is given as a integration of this. Now, to find what is that X which will give me this U I need to reverse this integration process which can be very hard ok. So, when F was exponentially distributed this was easy it was like 1 1 upon e to the power lambda X. But every time you may not be dealing with exponential right you may have to deal with other distributions. So, doing this inversion is required and that may become hard. So, that is why we have to resort we have to look for other methods than what we just discussed ok. So, there is a one method called Box Miller method which is also a direct method which is particularly it was full to generate normal distribution samples according to following normal distribution. So, let us see how does this work.    So, R and theta are independent will you be able to find distributions of R and theta joint distribution of R and theta you should be able to write like you know the distribution of U 1 R is a function of U 1 you should be able to find distribution of R and you should be able to also find distribution of theta and now X 1 depends on both R and theta, but R and theta are independent. You should be also able to find the distribution of x 1 and x 2 here and you mean you can apply the Jacobian method that we have discussed before and you once you do that you will see that and you find that joint distribution and when you find their marginal you will see that both x 1 and x 2 are Gaussian distributed. So, since you know the method it is just about doing the calculations just working out the details I am skipping and you should verify this ok. So, you see that like the previous method just using this based on this uniform distribution generating Gaussian was not feasible right just based on uniform you have we could not generate Gaussian distribution, but now we just came up with other method here which is also using uniform distribution, but it is still giving us Gaussian distribution. It is just like we need to do the appropriate mapping ok by transforming one and in an appropriate way we may get desired distribution. But what is that mapping that is the question and that need to be solved like here this box miller method maybe this box miller figured out that ok. If I do transformations like this, if I take R and theta in terms of u 1, u 2 like this and if I define my x 1 and x 2 then he said that this transformation actually gives what I want ok. It is not necessary that if I want to generate let us say tomorrow binomial distribution the same kind of transformation may will work maybe you have to find a other transformation suitable for that case. However, I notice this here this here we are interested in generating Gaussian and Gaussian is continuous.


And we are live. We are live with Austin huff from power comics. Hello everyone. Thank you for being patient Thank you for waiting Just a little bit longer than than usual just make so so that we can make sure that we were ready because We've got a lot a lot lot to talk about Austin huff is with power comics and they have a new Kickstarter For super joe unlimited and there's a link in the description of this very live stream Which you can check out as soon as we're done here. It is it the Kickstarter is live right now So let's start with talking with Austin Austin if you could Introduce everyone to you and tell everybody what you're doing. It's a pretty exciting project Hey everybody. Thanks for having me on the show Brian Austin huff power comics We stumbled into the wonderful license of super joe and We're able to come up with a comic book based on super joe Which is a wonderful opportunity, you know, if there's any line of of toy Especially something that's so significant as part of gi Joe cannon that really Doesn't have a backstory fulfilled. It is definitely super joe. So we're looking You know very excitedly at being able to fill in this major gap And what we think is the greatest toy light in the history of toy lights and Super joe, I'm pretty familiar with super joe I think folks who know the history of gi Joe are familiar with super joe But for the for the uninitiated What what's your just brief breakdown of what super joe was back in the 70s? And you know kind of what you're bringing forward to today Sure Well, as most people know or maybe they don't know gi joe Went from being a military toy to being the adventure team probably most likely from what everybody talks about due to the The the the hatred towards the vietnam war Hasbro took it in a different direction made it more Big jim like as as I like to call it, you know more adventure more fun More athletic things like that But then around 1975 1976 they abandoned the 12 inch format And shrunk it down to the eight inch format or eight and a half inch format very similar to the old migo action figures Which at the time migo was the leader in action figure toys So it seemed to make sense Also, it probably was getting to be cost restrictive or prohibitive to do a 12 inch action figure line with the cost of oil The economy was in the tank. It was just not a good time financially economically in the united states unfortunately When they shrank the toy line down to eight and a half inches And on top of it, they took it to outer space. They gave it more of an outer space theme We're taking the super joe adventure team To all corners of the galaxy was pretty much their motto And instead of you know fighting, you know in war or doing adventure team stuff. They were battling Monsters in the galaxy darkon and gore and whatnot You know it was really cool, but unfortunately It only lasted for about a year and a half two years Even though when you look at the the line if you go to the 3d joe site on the internet um Man the the the action figures were great.  They had like like almost like pulsar rays like iron man on their chests It was a great line and the accessories and the outfits and the action packs that went with it Were, you know very much in the the vein of the the gi joe adventure team But the line failed and I think most action figures lines failed at that time Me go ended up going out of business hasbro cut off super joe in the late 70s Um star wars kicked everybody's butt.  They failed abysmally, right?  I mean Outer space was the big thing in the late 70s into the early 80s You know the space shuttle columbia was brand new so Space was a big thing, but the only The only license that really made an impact was star wars at sea Yeah, I it's hard to overestimate the impact that star wars had I mean as a game changer in in the toy industry and the entertainment industry um, but uh Super joe like a lot of others Tried to capitalize on that I think most of our audience probably is familiar with um with me go at least I hope you guys are familiar with with me go uh, so we're talking about um Average eight inch figures pretty well articulated Uh cloth goods uniforms.  Um me go As a kid I collected uh adventure team. I collected matel's big gym. I collected me go. I collected star wars and as I grew into adulthood and rediscovered all of my toys I decided that I was going to focus solely on me go's world's greatest superheroes for the most part Or I probably would have you know been broke and gotten divorced a lot earlier in my my life um, so I focused on uh me go's world's greatest superheroes And specifically on creating my own custom me go's because when I was a kid me go stopped producing new Super hero action figures in 75 or 76. I think the last line they came out with Was the teen titans Which at the time, you know, wasn't really a big deal They were about an inch and a half smaller than the traditional me go George Perez hadn't gotten his hands on the comic book, you know the new teen titans yet That was about, you know a good eight to ten years away So they kind of just you know ended up, you know going away And they never made a lot of characters that I loved a hawk man green lantern red skull, um, dr. Doom lex luther and on and on and on So when I rediscovered all of these, uh toys up in my parents attic One day back in like the late 90s maybe 96 97 Um, I was already married. I had a child. I had another one on the way And the internet was brand new brian. I mean it was in its infancy And I got online and I found the me go museum dot com And I found there all of the I mean it was like a historical record of everything me go did Right And on top of it. They had a section called custom me go And there were all these people on there who were doing all of the things that I always wanted to do as a kid I wanted to make my own hawk man my own daredevil my own doctor octopus figures But I didn't know how to do it. Well, all of these people into adulthood had figured out what to do and they left instructions on the me go museum And to tell us what to do and how to do it. Well, I haven't stopped ever since that day And I probably have made well over 650 to 700 Individual distinct different customs for my collection And uh a couple of years ago. I think it was about 2018 or 19 I founded the custom me go hall of fame on facebook Nice.  They're so versatile and so Super joe Yeah, super joe is sometimes a forgotten gi joe line we talk a lot about you know the 12 inch gi joe and The three and three quarter inch gi joe in the 80s But there there was this um this in between gi joe series of super joe That is that was that's still part of the legacy and that's what we're uh what you're bringing it for now So I want to talk about the campaign because that is live now Uh, so tell us what you're doing. Uh, what what your super joe Kickstarter comic book is Tell us about the campaign tell us what they can get And let's talk some about like the specifics of it because I know from speaking with you earlier You got some really cool people involved. Yeah, absolutely. So We we get the opportunity to do a super joe comic book And it's like a blank canvas brian. There's there's really no history. There's very little history Um, there there was a A form letter that was sent out to adventure team members Letting them know that they were taking gi joe to outer space and they were renaming them super joe And you know four corners of the galaxy yada yada yada stuff and it was signed by mike triumph and super joe Other than that, there's really not a lot of history or origin backstory to this stuff So we could have taken this in a million different directions And the way we decided to take it with the um, uh, with the blessing of uh, jason shearmeyer and steve stovall from super joe unlimited action figures um, what we're going to do because Before a real american hero all of the joes whether it was super joe adventure team gi joe military They all were similar You know to the point where were they all clones of each other, you know It that's just the way they looked so, you know every kid could have a super joe And they would all look the same and it wouldn't be though the super joe is we're calling him tony Well, no, we're not he's his name is joe. He's super joe So we looked at this and said why don't we take The characters that are out there from from vintage super joe And we claim that they are actually clones And there were a cloning experiment that was done Decades decades earlier And they've had to bring them out of hibernation so to speak because all of a sudden there's this threat In in on earth and that's led by dark con and gore And the point of the story is they've had they they developed these clones And felt that they didn't need to use them Because The world had become such a peaceful place I equate it similarly to that that old movie demolition man with sylvester stalone and wesley snipes Where everything on earth was peaceful And then they thought out wesley snipes and all hell broke loose, right? Yeah Similar to that but We're not thawing out gore and darkon gore and darkon are coming from another place Because you know the universe of boar is a vacuum right and nothing lasts forever So if you have peace for too long a time We got to bring some we got to bring some war into the the story And then they're going to have to figure out. What do we do? We haven't had to fight any kind of an evil force for decades And then one of the scientists pipes up in the the conference room right with all of the all of the heads of the world And says, you know We were working on this top secret project that we called super joe way back when but we put the kibosh on it For a number of different reasons. Maybe it's time. We thought out these guys So, yeah, you mentioned that there really wasn't a lot of Super joe media Back when the toy line was out So that does give you a lot of freedom to kind of create Based on these figures and these characters characters that you have so Uh, so you've got the this kick started going and I have it pulled up here and it looks like you are You were almost at halfway When I checked last year so close so close to the halfway point Uh for just being oh uh being up for a few days Yeah, um, so Uh, so but this is a comic book. It's a visual medium. Um, what do you get? Who do you have in terms of artists doing doing the work doing the covers? Who do you got involved man an all-star lineup? You know, uh, when I originally threw out the teaser to announce this brian I know you remember this and I know everybody listening probably remembers this as well Um, I threw up a copy of the cover of issue number four of a real american hero back in 82 Right created by a personal friend of mine and a guy that I've worked with in the past on my comic series the master's bob hall Right and I reached out to him and said hey bob. I've got this opportunity to do Super joe. I know you don't know anything about it But what I want you to do is I want you to take your issue number four cover And I want you to take the super joe characters as I have them laid out on on your cover and I want you to recreate it almost do a tribute to yourself and he was more than happy to do it And it's just a spectacular thing. So I've got bob hall doing the cover On the interior page is doing the art. I have steven butler Who has done everything from silver sable to spider-man to sonic the hedgehog? But you know what? I got distracted with steven butler first and I want to go back to bob hall So I I put that that that image up of the 82 cover right the cover number four I remember and all of a sudden there's just this avalanche of tweets and social media posts facebook instagram I was getting emails from people Asking me that if I did I pick up the a real american hero license As god is my witness And out my heart I had no idea there was so much Controversy and turmoil going around with a real american hero and id w and and is it going to keep going on? What what's happening? I had no idea. So when I put that up I just wanted to tease everybody say hey, I'm going to redo this cover with super joe And let them know in three days what we're doing, right? well I just got this incredible backlash from people that you know If you're going to do real american hero, you better do this and you better hire larry hama And you better hire this guy and you better not screw this up and who the hell are you and all kinds of stuff but The thing is is that You know as I was about to type in A response that says hey guys, I don't have this license etc. Etc. I kind of set back and let it play itself out You know and I say I say this all the time brian the internet's got internet. Yeah, it's yeah It will happen Yeah, you had no you didn't know I guess at the time everything that was going on the timing Was it it raised a lot of eyebrows because at that time people were like well Who is getting the gi to license? I after id w? well Is larry going to continue these were all questions and then here you come with a gi joe Headline a little teaser. All right. Well, you certainly got everyone's attention. So if that's what you're trying to do Uh mission accomplished.  That was not my intention but What I did learn from this was number one that gi joe are real american hero comic book fans and toy fans Are rabid and passionate about gi joe The second thing I learned was that they have very very strong opinions about who they want to see Working on gi joe related comic books So I started making a list of the people that they mentioned. I started researching on my own cover artists interior artists colorists letterers Writers create anybody who touched gi joe in specifically the last 20 years But I I even went back to the beginning of marvel days in the 80s you know when you know Who was doing covers back then everybody from al milgram to bob hall. I think uh, uh, Bob mcclough did some covers michael golden did so. I mean everybody I mean who's who right? Yeah, I probably I probably Reached out to no fewer than two dozen creators To Ask them if they wanted to be involved in this project The first guy that I brought on was a guy who actually reached out to me. His name is jim brown He has colored no fewer than 150 idw a real american hero comic books And he made a post on one of my threads on facebook And I recognized the name from the research I did and I reached out to him and I said, hey man Would you be interested in doing this because I thought I want to I want to do right by super joe I want to do right by the property And I want to give it that bronze age feel but man. I would really like to give it that modern day zing And the colorists if you get the right colorists They're going to give you that modern day feel and jim as i'm looking through his portfolio I'm like this is the guy that I want to color these books So I reached out to him and he was the first guy who Said, you know, yeah, this is a great idea.  I'm listening to The the the advice that you gave me, you know do this don't do that. Hey, man I love this. It's a passion project project for me, but I don't want to be the only one who reads it and likes it I wanted to appeal to the masses So I get jim brown And I start contacting all of these other guys to see if they're interested I I contacted guys back in the 80s I contacted guys who, you know, we're working all the way up to the end with idw And we were we were able to land A number of guys to do alternate covers and things like that we picked up Um, I'll read off this list of names.  He's doing an alternate cover for us. Actually, we wanted to do A free preview comic originally like a real short eight page comic book And give it away at all the joe cons this summer But I looked at and I thought you know what I'd rather take all that money to give something away for free and put it into A real official number one issue So even though we still have all of the pages laid out for this preview issue We're not going to produce it unless we reach a certain goal on the kickstarter and then we're going to give it away for free Nice. So we've got nitho deas who's done a ton of stuff for idw with gi joe Inking nitho is theago gomez. Both of those guys are from brazil. So I've really got to you know brush up on my portuguese Okay Um, and they just they just finished the cover for the preview issue, which we're calling issue number zero So if you go on any of my social media instagram twitter Power comics on facebook. You'll see it. It's amazing. Again. I mentioned jim brown doing the colors We pulled out a couple of veterans from the 70s. We pulled in to do some work. We pulled in bob hall Who not only did the cover which everybody has seen now But we also he's also going to be doing sketch cards As an add-on on the kickstarter joining him is going to be jeff isherwood Fantastic marvel artist from the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s probably most famous for namor Uh, dr. Strange and conan Um, a few more modern guys that I was able to pull I was able to pull in ron joseph. He's done covers for gi joe for idw I was able to pull in brian shear He's done covers for gi joe and idw and robert atkins as well and actually when I was at joe fest I was able to uh Finally meet robert and brian because I'd only talked to them on the phones, but These comic books here that are autographed by robert There's a couple beauties right here These are going to be up for add-on status on the kickstarter soon I just need to get pictures of those and here's a real nice one from brian shear You can see his autograph right here And also if you look closely you'll see larry the legend larry hama Right over i'm sorry. I'm backwards on the camera I'll see it right here And he did sign it to me so I may have to keep this one now that I look at it So you're you're dropping a lot of names that um gi joe fans real american hero fans will be familiar with it. I mean those are artists that we've seen a lot so we uh, I mean we've grown to know and love their artwork. I mean robert atkins brian shear these are Well known names to us. So so there's a lot familiar here that seems like there will be a lot familiar to um 80s 90s gi joe fans um and to like 70s mego fans so you've got you've got appeals to both groups but you also have something new you have a fresh story um Fresh ideas. So yeah, that's that's a fascinating combination of the old and the new that's really it's it's an intriguing project Thank you. Um, I'm really excited about it having Guys like robert and ron and brian and nifo and fiego doing these alternate covers Is is is a thrill But there's there's one more person that I need to announce and I hope I can announce it on your show that we're adding This this is the breaking news. This is the exclusive With all this with all this other breaking news today. I hear that a real american hero is actually being published somewhere Did you hear about that? I did I did and larry's back writing it. Yes. That's what we've all been waiting for Uh, we're we're pretty happy about that. That's wonderful.  I'm ready. Okay So I have been talking to this uh creator for a few weeks And at joe fest I confirmed that larry hamah Is in for an alternate cover on super joe That's really cool. So larry hamah This guy right here larry hamah Here's my there's my autograph super joe or gi joe treasury edition larry hamah is in for an alternate cover and uh Gentlemen, I mentioned earlier. Jeff isherwood will be inking him That's that is awesome.  There there we go That's the guy and and what's really funny is if you look closely at the picture with larry I actually made a a brand new Cover just for him above super joe unlimited. It says larry hamah presents Nice Just as a tribute to him That's awesome. So this is this That's a new announcement larry hamah will be doing An alternate cover for super joe. You know, it's extraordinary about that. Is it kind of links? Uh larry to all three eras to the 12 inch era because he brought that into Real american hero with joe colton and now it'll be bringing him into the super joe era. That's uh, That's groundbreaking. That's really cool. Now. Here's here's another thing that I want to add for your audience to know all of the alternate covers Are unlocked at certain levels of commitment So, you know, we're our goal is 10 000 and 15 000 it unlocks a cover 20 25 30 something like that we're going to do or we have in place. I should say The cool thing about the new alternate covers And we've got to we've got to find a place a space to put larry and we're probably going to want to put him lower So we reach that goal right away. By the way, uh, the Kickstarter just went over $55 000 Yeah, so what what we're doing it and I don't I don't think I've ever seen this anywhere else. This was my idea If we reach a specific goal, let's say 15 000 unlocks larry hamah's cover You can buy larry hamah's original artwork for a set price And if you do if you buy that as an add-on You will be able to consult with larry and create that cover The same thing goes for robert atkins and brian shear and ron joseph I I talked to all of them about it. They all thought it was a great idea So if you want to buy the larry hamah cover or the brian, uh shear cover or whomever You will actually be able to consult with them And within reason put together the cover of your choice because you're the one who's going to be buying the original art Yeah, and again within reason, but I think that that's a fun idea. That's a fun interactive idea So that's very cool. Well, you know, again, it kind of goes back to You know Give give the public what they want You know the reason why we take this to kickstarter the way we do is because Just because I like this idea and think it's great doesn't mean that 10 000 other people think it's great I might be the only guy So when i'm looking at all of the comments on social media about Who should be working on this project and what they should be doing and you should talk to so-and-so Hey, I just want the fans out there to know that I listen You know, I listen to your constructive criticism those who called me an a-hole I kind of pushed to the side But if you want to give me constructive criticism, I'll be the first guy to listen to that You know, I think I think self-awareness is a very underappreciated trait in today's society And I like to think that i'm self-aware Uh, we can use yes, we can use more of that and and uh, Congratulations for tipping over halfway as we are speaking. That is awesome. Um, so, uh, but let's talk about What people will be getting so you have uh, some different supports or pledged tiers Uh starting at I believe it was what five dollars for the digital copy. So I might sketch a digital. Yeah, so that's that's that's that's pretty easy But let's talk about how What people can expect to get at the at the different tiers? Like I said, the link is in the description of this So hopefully people will be going to check out that as soon as we're done here But what will people see and what will they want to try to get in on? Well, we have a lot of exclusive action figure related toys So every reward level you get at least one comic book But you get different rewards like we have an exclusive Action figure set called the sting of the scorpion which I have right here If you can see super joe adventurer with his big machete And I believe you did send me a picture of that. Is this yeah and it comes with the scorpion So you've got a scorpion you've got there it is. Yeah, that's a better picture of it So the sting of the scorpion we have 15 sets. We're down to three 12 have already been claimed We have this awesome radar table That's from a uh, I don't know if you can see that. I think I sent you a picture of it The orange radar table. Yeah, let me find it here. That's from our buddy jim eggner Tk 5 6 0 on etsy. He does all kinds of amazing 3d printed Joe stuff And this is he does stuff in super joe scale I mean a real american hero scale 12 inch. He does fantastic stuff Then we've got some really cool again action figure related stuff some DIY add-ons we have a really cool super joe commander Like like almost like a captain kirk console chair You know from the the deck of the the starship enterprise, which is neat This really cool launch pad and those come from there you go Those come from my buddy my buddy randall wall Good old canadian He does a lot of stuff through cotswolds So if you get the cotswold catalog and you know greg brown who puts on dfw You're gonna know randy's work The launch pad is fantastic, especially because the original super joe Had an action pack called the helipack Which was actually fantastic and if you look closely at the cover of super joe unlimited number one We actually put a joe with the helipack on in the background. Let me see if that let's see is this Well, they're right here. Yeah, that's yeah, there we go That's our Kickstarter ad it's similar to the cover similar similar Similar, but you definitely get the helipack guys back there. There's super joe commander and of course The new version of gore Um other things. I mean it's like I said it's action figure heavy There's for 150 you get a set of four Super joe commanders with accessories For 150 bucks you get a set of super a set of four super joe adventurers With accessories there's all kinds of original art. Obviously we mentioned all of the All of the Additional covers that we're doing those are all for sale The art that you just showed for the ad that steven butler did is for sale Uh nitho de as his art is for sale Um, we have autographed bob hall 11 by 17 posters of the cover that are available Um, just just a ton of stuff and if we run out of things We'll find stuff to add You know, we already somebody already backed the the kickstarter for 300 bucks and got a carded vintage super joe commander figure Those are not hard to find Or those are hard to find. I'm sorry. I should say they are very hard to find. Yeah Oh the other thing that we have that I want to push because I'm sure you know steve charlton He does a lot of work with toy lanta And joe lanta the joe lanta people were were nice enough to give me Five reduced price passes. They're only 10 bucks and joe lanta is coming up in uh, august I think they're typically 15 or 20 bucks Um, we're blowing them out. We've got five. They're only 10 bucks a piece. You can add those on You can you know, if you have a family of five, you can buy them all and save yourself probably 50 of the cost to go to joe lanta Uh, that's great. I one thing I like about this project is that obviously if you if you want the comic book You can get the comic book, uh, but you've got other uh tangible items That can go with it. So you've got figures. You've got um play sets you've got Other items that that you can pick up and me being you know, a toy guy I like that, you know, the tactile experience of having the objects in in my hand. So uh I think that'll appeal to to some of the toy guys even if they're they're more toy guys than comic book guys Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think we're developing a story that is going to Captivate the gi joe reader and the gi joe toy collector Two other things that I think are really cool that I want to mention before I forget is we're doing a set of Laser engraved coins Both of them have the super joe unlimited logo on the back side And on the front side one will have the super joe commander And the other will have dark hot Nice, we've got this really cool laser engraved coin set And also what I think is super cool is Getting yourself drawn as a character in the comic book Now we only have four of these left And I would love somebody to grab all four and not just because I'm selfish and greedy Okay, but because I think it'd be really cool if somebody grabbed all four Like maybe there's like a group of four buddies out there that are big-time gi joe or super joe guys Right, or maybe you know a father and three sons or a mother father and their two kids or Something like that that you want to do or you want to do it for somebody that you think is a real big joe fan And this is kind of like a gift to them getting them in the comic book. I think that's a really cool thing I think I that so you can be in the comic book and Hear me out this this I think this is a brilliant idea. Yeah same guy Gets all four Yeah, the clone you just draw them four times. You know, I think this is a brilliant plan Uh, I know I'm kidding. I'm just like I was gonna see that's a pretty expensive thing there for That Yeah vanity project. I admit vanity. Um, but I think that's another interactive thing that you have That uh, that can get people actually involved and influence the book Like being able to have some influence on The specialty covers as well. So that's kind of that kind of interactive interactivity is is nice to see Yeah Well, again, it goes back to listening to your fans Understanding what they want and trying to give them more of what you think they would like And and if and if some of these things don't work out if some of these things are, you know, duds We won't offer them next time. We'll try to find something else So, uh returning to just the sub the general subject of super joe In at least in the the 3 3 quarter inch gi joe real american hero community There is a lot of interest in the history of the line Even including the 12 inch going back to the 60s. Uh, so For those like like myself i'm i'm very interested in the history of the line Super joe it needs to be examined more I think a lot of times we can skip over super joe when we're talking about gi joe But this was part of it and I think it deserves more attention so, um, yeah, I uh I'm hoping that those who are Interested in the history of gi joe, but maybe don't know as much about super joe. We'll we'll take a look at it Um, so I guess let's let's talk it. Let's let's for those for the uninitiated. We talked a little bit about what super joe was but you you Super joe was in your era, right super grab that was in your real wheelhouse. Absolutely Uh, so what was the appeal of super joe, uh at that time?  I was born in 1969 So I was born right at the time where they were transitioning to adventure team Uh, my all-time favorite toy and this is out of all of my toys.  Yeah, I've seen that I've never I never ever got it off the ground. My father and I in a near west suburb of chicago Would run down the alley and try to get that thing up in the air never ever could Okay, and to this day it is still my all-time favorite toy. I I have the most fond memories with that toy So, you know super joe comes out And I was still collecting megos at the time And star wars was just getting traction, but I wasn't into star wars probably until closer To when empire came out. So around 1980 um So the super joe They they they fit in with all the the megos whether it was star trek or planet of the apes The accessories were great the rocket command center What I did with the rocket command center was I converted it into a fantastic four spaceship Instead of putting on the rocket command stickers. I put fantastic four stickers on there So I've got two I've got a A super joe rocket command center still in its box. Then I bought another one to customize for my mego fantastic fours The the accessories were fantastic. You know, uh, the helipack alone Think about who doesn't want to put a helicopter backpack on themselves or fly around town So I I thought that that line really did not get it's just desserts I know there's a bunch of people out there who agree with me um Revolutionary technology you press a button in the back and it would you know punch You know that kind of stuff wasn't seen until the superpowers line came out in the 80s When you you push like the flash together and his legs would spin or superman would punch or whatever Not to mention they all came with those lights on their chest And then you had the the night fighters luminos and shield Those were some pretty for for not originating in a comic book or a cartoon series Those were pretty creative characters um and for For a guy that used to be able to play with the toys as a young person to now Have a shot at creating something new for that property just what's um Talk to us about how you feel about that and just um What that feels like to be revisiting that now After all these years and actually being able to contribute something to it You know it's such it's such an honor and a privilege And I know those words get thrown around a lot by a lot of people But i'm being completely sincere when I say this It's an honor and a privilege to be able to Become or become part of history Help fill in the gaps in history um You know, I think I think a lot of creators Would feel the same way if they were given this opportunity You know, um It's it's like being approached by dc or marvel and say hey, we want to reintroduce A new batman or we need a new costume for thor or captain america Or or spider man back in the 80s. I mean how cool was that to be able to Hey, how about how about we give spider man a new costume and they approach mike zek and they say hey What do you think and boom this is what he comes up with the next thing you know It's one of the most iconic covers in the history of comic books So I I feel so honored and privileged to be able to to be involved in this As a guy who right now in my life specifically I only collect migo world's greatest superheroes And I I have my reasons, okay But if if everybody who's listening Will understand and I say this to anybody who who can hear me Uh my younger brother he's seven years my junior He was totally into a real american hero I mean all of his gi joe toys are still in our parents basement Back in suburban chicago to this day, okay um That that line the a real american hero line and the gi joe line in its entirety In my opinion is the single greatest action figure line of all time Just because I don't collect them as others collect them Doesn't mean I don't see how important they are In the history of action figures let alone in toys in general specifically the real american hero line they were It was a a landmark action figure line with the articulation With the uh the box art, you know, I've told this to people before You know you have star wars and we know how big that was but they had a movie to go with it And when they did the packaging all it was was a photograph of what was in the box The the the card art the file cards The box art. I remember there was one that I see all the time at the shows And I think it's called the bug the cobra bug maybe I love that art the colors the purples the magentas the greens the the the domes on the I mean, it's just a fantastic Art and I know the gentleman who did most of that passed away not too long ago Yes, and and I know that a lot of that was reused and there's all kinds of legends and stories about that And it's unfortunate if any of those are true But the the a real american hero line for my money is the single greatest action figure line of all time Of all time. I don't think there's anything even close it revolutionized everything Uh as a fan, of course, I agree You mentioned the the artwork for The gi joe real american hero line and our friend karson the taxes from 3d joe's Is working on an omnibus Of all of that artwork from the various artists Which is gonna be coming out soon. That's a Kickstarter that he did. I'm extremely happy to see that Coincidentally, um, that was kind of my introduction or you know refresher on super joe and maybe a lot of other people too because A while back karson picked up some super joe figures and kind of showed them off and that was kind of I think a reminder to a lot of us that hey, this is this is a part of gi joe's legacy and lore and history And uh, maybe deserves to be talked about. So, um, yeah, this this could be hopefully um kind of a launch of A resurgence, I guess Of of interest in super joe um, so Those of you who are wanting to Get into collecting super joe figures too late prices are going up. Sorry guys Should have got in on it last year too late, right? Um, but uh, but yeah, um, so you've got Kickstarter's already already launched Already going uh, we pull it out here real quick one more time take a peek at it. Um, did did you ever see did you ever see this? You know what?  Yeah. Well, there was something in the late 70s And i'm gonna look for this photograph for you. Uh, it was called wall busters And they did like spider-man superman evil kaneval wonder woman Kirk and spock. I think but they also did super joe and excuse me legendary Marvel artist john busema Did the art for this And I want to send this to you. I want you to put this up on your screen. Sure. Sure. I'm gonna send it to you Uh via facebook messenger if that's okay. Gotcha. Hold on. All right So i'm gonna copy this image and get it to you.  If you can grab that real quick, but um This is Just a spectacular piece of art. You want to talk about history? I don't think a lot of people know that this exists I've never seen one in person. I've only seen one in images on on the internet and um What we're going to be doing with our Kickstarter is we are going to be Recreating this One of the artists that has worked with me quite a bit on my other series the masters tom morgan He has signed on to recreate this and we're going to Get it all drawn up and colored and then we're going to produce it as a window cling to put in your car All right, that's the one that's the one there we go. Yeah So that's that's fascinating. I do remember these uh, Wallbusters or what I think was that why they were called? Wallbusters. Yeah. Wallbusters. I vaguely remember these because I believe I've seen like the spider-man the the hulk Had no idea that they did this for super show. That's that's uh fascinating. Yeah, right? They also did evil keneval. They did track. They did I think king kong There's a bunch of them out there. I have them saved somewhere on my computer but This one It's clearly john busema doing the art And I confirmed that with people who would know And it's just going to be a beautiful recreation colored I'm really looking forward to that. But when you mentioned karson, I've had Facebook messenger conversations with karson about what he's doing And it's just spectacular stuff. This is something that is is part of super joe history You know, they even made halloween costumes of super joe when we were kids they made They think they made a dark con. They made a gore And I think they made either the shield or luminos one of the night fighter guys and you know, it's It's amazing because you think man this toy toy line really didn't do much But it kind of checks the boxes and all of the pop culture stuff You know the the wall posters the The halloween costumes and things like that they even made super joe jewelry If you go to that 3d super joe.com website, you'll see all kinds of stuff. They did Um, I'm surprised. They didn't make like a super joe bed Like remember those car beds they had when we were kids in the 70s? Yeah, yeah So, you know super joe Even though it was around for a year and a half two years It had a decent impact on pop culture from my vantage point. They got to do a lot of cool stuff And I guess for hasbro. This was uh, their attempt to carry joe forward So this was this was gi joe for them at the time. So they they put the effort into it. So that It's nice to see it getting some attention as and as someone who appreciates the history of gi joe in all of its iterations I'm thrilled to see somebody doing something with it um, so Yeah, we're closing in on or at least we're getting pretty close on An hour here. So I'll wrap it up pretty soon. But before we wrap it up. I want to basically just turn it over to you For anything else you want to say to remind everyone to check out the Kickstarter and and just Give your your thoughts and comments to anyone who might be seeing this and it might be interested in The super joe unlimited comic Yeah, you know, I appreciate any and all support Um, you know the the comic book the plot summary the story the art I think everybody's going to fall in love with it. I think everybody's gonna Be eager to read issue number two and then three and then four and so on and so forth Support the action figure line. I know that the cotswold just got in Boxed super joe commanders and boxed dark cons. Uh, just in the last couple days I know I've been seeing people posting on facebook today. They they're just getting theirs mailed and shipped to them all around the country So this is an exciting time to be a joe fan whether it's 12 inch eight inch three and three quarter Or anything in between super joe a real american hero this is And will always be the the greatest action figure line in the history of action figure lines I I don't think anything even comes close to it You know and we're trying to do as much as we can with it and this is an opportunity for us To fill in that void because there is definitely a void between 76 and 82 And as god is my witness i'm going to fill in that void And hopefully it's with your help Absolutely. Yeah, there's a void. Um that we we need to Look at it. Not a real void. It's something that we just don't pay enough attention to so Thank you for for being on the show. Uh, thank you for your efforts With uh with the super joe comic. I hope you guys have all the success. Thank you for letting us know that We should be getting larry hama In involved in this that is very exciting Absolutely. Now all I have to do is coax them into helping me write the script Yes, that's uh Good luck Uh, no, we we love larry larry has written our favorite comics for decades now. So, uh, it's it's a thrill It's a thrill to to see him involved with this project. So yeah, it really is. Thank you So, yeah, uh, that's I think we'll wrap it up. I will say to to those watching I know that I usually pay more attention to The live chat. I didn't uh follow it as much this time, but I do recognize you guys are here It's really great to see you guys. So thank you for showing up Again, the link is in the description of this video so you can pop over there right now And I think that's all I got for you. Thank you very much. Austin. Sorry. I missed you at joe fest I'm sorry. I missed you at joe fest. Uh, what was it next year? Next year. Yes Ed Schumacher puts on a great show people if you get to go to joe fest Do it It was a lot of fun a lot of fun. All right. Well, uh, thank you again, austin and uh, I guess we'll sign off and everybody go check out Kickstarter for super joe unlimited comic from power comics Yo joe Super joe super joe


Definitely a bit of an odd night in MLB DFS where we have some really fun names on this slate guys who Have one side youngs could win side youngs in the very near future and stuff like that But for one reason or another a lot of them have Pretty major red flags which does force us to dig down a bit deeper and decide Can we still use these guys despite these red flags? And honestly, I think no for a couple of them We're gonna break down what those red flags are how should impact how we view those guys and more to get you ready for Monday night in MLB DFS. Welcome on into the solo shop. That's right here on the Fandall podcast network and Fandall research I am Jim Saunas. I am a digital media managing editor for Fandall research here to break down Monday's eight game main slate With lockstep for 7 10 p.m. Eastern for today couple weather notes on the slate both of which are minor First one is that there's a chance of rain in New York for the Mets and the Pirates I think they'll be good to go but check back on that one later on Similar forecast in Atlanta where we have some scattered showers potentially there for the brazen the Yankees But even lower rain odds than in New York, so I would say both those games should be good to go We're checking back on later, especially because both those games have the highest temperatures on the main slate so that is good for batting but Should be all systems go for tonight across the board we'll dig into what that means Why the pitching options are kind of weird for tonight and much more in just one second But first a reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcast We are not too far away from NFL season the heat check will be back for that twice weekly breaking down Recap show and a preview show as well to get you ready Probably need to know for NFL DFS each and every week along with USC for select events PGA for the final two events of the FedEx cup playoffs coming up as well all right here in the same feed So go search that wherever you get your podcast and don't forget you can find the solo shot as well on the Fandall YouTube page And on Fandall TV plus Baseball season is heating up so get in on the action with Fandall America's number one sports book because right now new customers Get one hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets guaranteed when you place your first five dollar bet Fandall is safe secure and super easy to use plus when you win You'll get paid instantly so don't miss your chance to swing big with one hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets win or lose When you make your first five dollar bet Fandall official partner of Major League Baseball Major League Baseball trademarks used with permission must be 21 plus and present in select states first online Real money wager only a penned dollar deposit required refund issued is non withdrawal bonus bets that expire in seven days Restricts and applies to full terms at fandall.com slash sports book Fandall is offering online sports waging in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas star casino LLC gambling problem call 1-800 gambler or visit fandall.com slash RG in Arizona 1-800 next step protects next step to 5334 2 in Connecticut 1-888-789-7777 Or visit ccpg.org such chat in indiana 1-809 with it in Wyoming in Kansas 1-805-2-2-4-0-7-0 in Kansas KS Gambling Health comm Louisiana's 1-877-770 stop in Massachusetts gambling helpline MA org or call 800-327-50 50 for 247 support in Maryland empty gambling health org in New York 1-877-880 open wire text open wide and in West Virginia go to 1-800 gambler net Pitching preview for this Monday's late Tyler Glass now checks in with the highest error at fandall. He's a ten thousand seven hundred dollars Followed by Max Fried here at ten thousand six hundred dollars Max Scherzer is ten five Logan Gilbert ten thousand you'd Darvish 97 Meryl Kelly comes in at ninety thirty dollars with Brady sinker at ninety one Patrick Sandoval and miles Nicholas are the others as miles Michael is I should say Are the others eight thousand dollars for hire now the big concerns tonight are gonna be freed and glass now I'll talk about them in things to watch because I think their pitch counts are gonna be kind of wonky and They're the top two guys in the safe messiah perspective, but I Think both of them have big enough red flags with regards to length where I kind of want to look elsewhere Scherzer is the one guy of that trio who doesn't have those big red flags now He does get the angels at home Which is not a good matchup for his floor because they've got good hitters on that roster But it's not a bad matchup for ceiling So I do like Scherzer for DFS as a result the angels having 113 at WRC plus against righties in the current active roster Hit for a lot of power, but they also have a 25 percent strikeout rate and Scherzer look pretty good recently He's made two starts with the Rangers He has 15 strikeouts and 13 innings really good bad at ball beta and the results been pretty good, too Across the full season Scherzer has a 27 percent strikeout rate with a 13 percent swinging strike rate I've got Scherzer projected for 7.4 strikeouts, which is the highest number on the slate once you account for the pitch Count for glass now specifically so I do feel good ranking Scherzer first as a result It's not like some slant dunk situation by any means, but It is a tough matchup as well I think once you consider the issues for free and glass now I do want to put Max Scherzer number one So we can't go to glass now can't go to free lease based on my thought process here So let's have a look at Gilbert as being the number two stud fourth night and he's inconsistent But he definitely has upside And I think that's enough where we can at least give him a swing here He's facing the Royals, which is a big part of why I am into Uh Gilbert first night. They have a 92 w RC plus against righties. They've got rough plate discipline numbers Even if they don't strike out now as much as they used to and Gilbert's had a weird year where Earlier on this year his peripherals were really good, but his results were rough Now the results are getting better, but the peripherals aren't as good My most relevant sample on Gilbert is 14 starts where he's had more splitters and fewer sliders And the first 13 starts here. He never had more than seven strikeouts Which isn't a ton for dfs even when you you know look at glass now and freed if it weren't if or just that I'd probably look at them potentially here over over Gilbert for the second stud spot but then last time out Gilbert had 12 strikeouts against the Padres and it did co inside with a spike in his velocity So if Gilbert figured something out Maybe you can carry that over into tonight's matchup Which would be a good thing for him from a dfs perspective That game was at home This one is on the road and Gilbert's strikeout rate is two percentage points higher at home than it is on the road So a bit of a dip there, but not a huge gap in that regard So I don't know which Gilbert will see tonight. Maybe we'll see the highest strikeout one from last week Maybe we'll see kind of the boring but effective one that we saw before that But I think he's worth the swipe regardless because he canna spike games Whereas I don't think a ton of guys on the slate really can you darvish maybe could but he's in a tough matchup too At home with the Orioles, so we'll go Gilbert because his matchup is a lot easier with the Royals Among the value plays I'm super intrigued by Grayson Rodriguez at $7,500 His matchup is not fun because he's facing the Padres and they draw a lot of walks But Rodriguez is pitching really well right now Before he got demoted to AAA Rodriguez started to lean on his four seam fastball or off Obviously, that didn't fix everything because he had a really bad start and his second started there And still got demoted But we've seen that approach come with Rodriguez back in his second stint He's looking much better in this five start sample. Has he got raised 3.45? He has kind of ton of strikeouts, but He's faced the Dodgers raise Yankees blue jays and astros That is an absolutely like brutal schedule for Rodriguez to face me even while facing those teams He had a 13.4 percent swing and strike rate So Rodriguez is getting whiffs even against stiff competition And he's getting a good number of ground balls too When you combine that together Rodriguez has a 4.20 skill interactive era Even when you include those two games before his demotion And these are also super important games to the Orioles, you know, they matter for them They're letting go super deep in games. He's gone 97 96 and 93 pitches path three starts and I think they need him I think that Rodriguez will have a big game here pretty soon And it might not be tonight because it's a very tough matchup But to have a guy with that a big game in his range of outcomes for $7,500 is really fun So I'm gonna be on Rodriguez tonight as a value play I think it's a weirdness slate where that's justifiable given that there are some red flags around a lot of big studs So I think that Rodriguez is very much in play and a guy I'm willing to have in my player pool for tonight Let's move now to the stacks and talk about arizona. They're on course field tonight taking on chris flexon I think they're the most obvious stack in the slate and they're gonna be our top stack as well flexon Has made three starts for the Rockies It hasn't looked great He has a 6.02 skill interactive era with a 14% strikeout rate and an 11% walk rate obviously that is a small sample, but It's a continuation of what's happening earlier on this year flexon There is a reason he was designated for assignment by the Mariners And arizona's offense is still absolutely fine They have a 109 a wrc plus against righties with a 184 iso and now you put that in a great park So I think we have no choice but to be high on arizona here and feel pretty good in doing so We've seen jace peterson batting pretty high for this team roughly sixth Because they're facing a righty for tonight and he is playing entire games He's not hitting for any power, but he will run so i'm not super super in love with it because The Rockies tend to be pretty good at suppressing opposing running, but You know for 2,900 hours in this park batting sixth I think that's enough for peterson to be in our player pool. Even though i'm not in love with it I think there's still enough there to feel good about it Especially if it allows us to get to corbin carroll within the stack, which I really want to do so peterson Fine enough option all things considered for tonight for our second stack it's kind of an easy one because it's uh stacking against the pitcher he's been pretty good this year and clark schmidt. He's facing the braids tonight and That's the one reason i'm here. It is nothing to do with schmidt. Honestly. It's really just about how good atlanta's offense is Among all the parks on tonight's slate the one with the highest temperature by a pretty wide margin is atlanta 94 degrees No other park on the slate is above 83 degrees and only one other one is above 76 So if you want good hitting weather atlanta is the place to go for it and schmidt just happens to be The guy he's pitching there Over his past eight smarts starts. I actually think that schmidt's been getting better He's throwing more forcing fastballs and fewer sinkers and in that time He has a 4.14 skill interactive era. His era is 4.03. So He's pitching well But this is a big step up in competition. He faced a lot of bad teams during that stretch and the braves are nuts They have a 122 wrc plus against righties with a 222 i so as a team mind you So if they're a better fight slate for stacking I would not go with them here because I respect schmidt a lot, but it's not a good slate for stacking So I do think the braves make a lot of sense here and If they were to start tracking the poppies they could because their implied total is pretty high Maybe then you want to look elsewhere, but even then I do still feel like they're a good step Part of the reason why I feel good about that is that schmidt has struggled more with lefties and righties this year He has an 18 strikeout right against lefties compared to 26 against righties. So The stack becomes A bit less uneasy when you focus in the lefties Hopefully as the albies can play because he left last night's game early And he'd be a big loss for the left-handed side of things, but I'd still be here on the braves even if albies cannot go Finally, it seems like the pirates are going to start quinn preester tonight Um, I actually don't mind stacking either side of this game We'll talk about the meds here against preester and then we'll talk about the pirates in things to watch We're going to assume here that preester is a starter for the pirates did not officially Announce that as a case as of yet preester up to five starts in the majors. His era is 8.75 his skill interactive era is 5.40 and Honestly, that's not super unexpected because he was getting grown balls in AAA But the plate discipline numbers were not pristine yet and it led to a five 4.31 era there The ground balls are there in the majors too So I think that he's been a bit unlucky to let up five home runs across those first five starts But it's worth noting two of those home runs came against the guardians and that's not a high power team So that's kind of rough and the meds Despite their massive issues as a team Still have a good offense. They have a 111 WRC plus against righties Where they 43 hard hit rate and a low strike out rate. So they're a super tough opponent So I do like preester long term. I think that the ground balls are super enticing I just think that we can stack against him for the time being Now he talked a lot about Brandon Nemo on the show Uh, recently the home run binge has stopped for him He has not had once in July 21st and he's playing through a quad injury right now But even just in the month of august when he's played through that injury He is still often the ball more than he was before He's probably not going to run. So I'm not as into him as I was but With the salary back to the 3000 I'm okay going here even after the low expectations for him a little bit Let's go now two things to watch as mentioned I'm worried of a pitch count for max reading Tyler glass now glass now has not pitched yet in august They said he's a full go, but I don't think full go means full pitch allotment right now I have glass now projected for 80 pitches and honestly that might be a bit ambitious That's still a good number of strikeouts for him 80 pitches is but it's pretty tough As for freed he's gone 72 and 79 pitches and his first two starts back I haven't for 85 tonight. I think they're kind of being a little bit conservative with him So he's also not the highest strikeout got to begin with the Yankees better against lefties and righties So I don't mind if you want to take a swing at those two guys So they do still great out decently well my strikeout projections even with low pitch count projections, but Um I think you want to keep in mind that they do have some pretty serious red flags I mentioned before like the pirates offense. They're facing Carlos Carrasco Who is still really struggling? He's let up a 51 hard hit rate across his past 12 stars since his velo stabilized Pirates offense one of three wrc plus against righties. I think they could be An offense because a bit overlooked because they're not how high profile offense Probably won't have super high implied totals. So If you want to even get a bit different Uh, you know, if you're going arizona with the chalky route there Maybe use the pirates on the opposing side as being the differentiator stack Finally, it's okay to check out the Rockies tonight. It's just diesel and moderation They're facing maryl kelly who has made four starts since coming off the il and he's looked like his typical impressive self So not inclined to go there from that perspective, but it's just coarse field. They're well below Arizona for me Well, believe in the pirates, but it's still something to check out the Rockies Finally, let's do some dinger calls for tonight the boarding one Corbin carol at coarse field taking on a guy who's really struggling right now I adore Corbin carol. So let's go with him Corbin carol the boring homerun call for tonight the fun one is kind of a Similar guy to carol where he's got some speed got some power But it's michael harris and harris I think getting a bit better recently hitting them all pretty hard of late So he may move up in the order of all bees can't play which is not a bad thing I would prefer to have always in there, but hey, you know, it if harris is batting ninth I'm still okay with him. So michael harris will be the fun homerun call joining Corbin carol for today That's all we got for today here on the solo shop back with you once again tomorrow talking about a bolt mlb dfs and pga dfs Later on as well get both those by subscribing to the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts If you've got any questions for me, I am on twitter at jim sonnis j i m s a n n e s You can also follow fandal research at fandal research want to thank you all for tuning in for today This has been the solo shot right here on the fan dual podcast network


So hi everyone, my name is Alexander Konstantinescu. I'm working as a software engineer for Confluent and I'm going to be presenting essentially a year's worth of work that Me and my company and the upstream Kubernetes community have been working on With the goal of improving the reliability of Kubernetes load balancers quick note about me and my company essentially what I'm going to be presenting is kind of a niche problem that I hope that many of You have never experienced before and that you might however Experience in the future should you run a lot of load balancers in your clusters? And when I mean a lot of load balancers I'm talking about roughly the same amount of load balancers as you would have nodes This is essentially kind of a scalability problem that arises during operations with services So I'm going to begin by presenting a bit of the background that Exists within this problem space the problem in itself The solution that we've been working on and kind of some future work that we have on the whiteboard for the future So to begin with Kubernetes load balancers I think it's good to be a bit more specific Because the term load balancer in an ecosystem such as Kubernetes can mean a lot of different things So to begin with it's doesn't have any relation to do with beer metal nodes Which could lead to believe that it would have a relation to metal LB for those of you who are aware of that project Doesn't have anything to do with the ingress class or any of the gateway API that has been presented here at kubicon either So specifically what this aims at solving is a problem around the core v1 service and Specifically when you specify one, which is of type load balancer Moreover, this is also kind of tailored towards clusters that are running on the public cloud So essentially load balancers that could get provisioned by the Kubernetes control plane And a term that I think is important to remember at least for the later Part of this talk is a term connection draining I'm gonna get back to what that concretely means later on But I think it's a good topic to have already in your minds off the bat So how do v1 service load balancers work today? So The first part that I'm going to be presenting is kind of the general load balancer Configuration and what happens whenever you create a service of type load balancer on a Kubernetes cluster so These is kind of the general schematics of things and these are the main core Kubernetes components that interact Whenever such a thing happens know that on the control plane in the API server There's a controller called the Kubernetes cloud controller manager abbreviated KCCM for short that has a service controller So essentially it watches services and it also watches nodes and It kind of links these two resources together to be able to provision load balancers by issuing cloud API calls Now the state of the cluster in this case We have three nodes node 8 node B and node C So the KCCM will use these nodes to provision the load balancer and Configure the load balancer to target these three nodes in the cluster Underneath the hood we aren't the load balancer isn't really targeting Kubernetes nodes Since it's a cloud construct. So it doesn't really know anything about Kubernetes constructs It will target VM instances, but the mapping between the node and the VM instance is done in the KCCM And in the cloud provider code Simultaneously on the data plane you'll have the service proxy Which will then create networking rules So depending on the service proxy that can be a wide variety of different rules to be able to forward traffic To the endpoint or the pods so essentially the load balancer sends traffic to the node and Then the rule the networking rules on the node will then forward traffic to the pods And connectivity is thus achieved ingress connectivity is thus achieved An important aspect to note here Many of you probably already know that the node has a ready state so to speak and this ready state can flap between Both ready and not ready The KCCM watches node so it reacts to these events and whenever the node Transitions to not ready it will reconfigure the load balancer Through an update call so it calls the cloud provider API and issues an update call and what will remain Are the nodes that are ready? So in this given example node a has gone not ready So it will update the load balancer and just keep node B and node C That's kind of the first thing to note Another topic that we would like to discuss that is important here is health checks So health checks is essentially a construct that the cloud provider gives to the user with the goal of Enabling the user to be able to trap to dispatch or have a say on how traffic dispatching should be done The user within this context is the Kubernetes control plane since it's The actual component that talks to the cloud API and uses this contract construct and actually programs it and there are Different ways that Kubernetes goes about configuring the health check Depending on the service object. So the first Interesting mode is the external traffic policy field that many of you might be aware of I'm just going to give a short recap on that. So the external traffic policy field essentially allow Specifies how routing should be done for the for ingress traffic to reach your endpoint So specifically if it should use an additional net next hop to be able to arrive at the distant pod Or if it should go directly to the pod in question or and the node that is hosting the pod more specifically Also important to know is that these health checks are cloud provider specific So there's no general mechanism that applies to all but each individual cloud provider will configure it slightly differently And I'm going to be talking about these so if we have external traffic policy cluster, which means essentially that you allow the Traffic forwarding to happen with an additional next hop The health check is configured in a mode that I've denoted the proxy state essentially So what we're doing in this case is that the KCCM will configure the load balancer health check to target the service proxy Health Z port so in this case 10 to 56 is Q proxies health Z port so the load balancer will then determine if the service proxy is healthy and Whether or not it is it will fail the health check and Essentially mark the node as not eligible for traffic load balancing That's kind of the first mode Other cloud providers can choose another mode of doing it which is to use the node port of the service This is what I've denoted data plane reach ability So essentially what happens here is that the load balancer will try to reach the pod Directly and it will do so using the node port that is exposed on the node both of these methods is essentially trying to Assertain if the load balancer can actually reach the core endpoint the pod in this case And they're using it in two different mechanisms. The first is obviously this one is very explicit But in the previous one it is assumed that if the service proxy is running fine Well in that case, it's probably programmed all the networking rules that it needed to and hence the load bal any load balancer Traffic that arrives at the node can get forwarded to the pod For extra external traffic policy local What is interesting here is that we don't want to use an additional next hop So we want the load balancer to send traffic directly to the node in question that has the pod so for that to work the service proxy essentially watches services and endpoints and Just counts the number of endpoints that it has on each individual node and in this example I've noted just easily that there is no pod running on no day So hence the service proxy in this example fails the health check The port being used or targeted by the load balancer will be the health check node port field on the service object that can either manually be set by a user or Be automatically provisioned by the control plane. I mentioned connection draining in the beginning of the slide So what does that mean? Well connection draining essentially means that you block new connections, but you allow the existing ones to terminate It's essentially a graceful shutdown mechanism that the load balancer can or cannot support Older load balancers don't necessarily support connection draining Connection draining is however important in this talk simply because it kind of lays the foundation for what comes next and the Features that we've built upon and the improvements that we've made during this past year So what are the problems with this way of operating right and what I've just explained? So let's begin with the first one which is the impact on performance in ingress and I'm gonna get back to what Performance specifically means within this context So say for example that we have three load balancers in this case and we have three nodes This is kind of going back to the problem statement that I mentioned at the beginning of the slide You have an equal amount of load balancers with nodes roughly on the bottom We have a timeline of events that are interesting to the load balancer in our use case Which is the blue one. So let's focus on the loop on the blue one Now I mentioned that nodes can change state and that's completely fine. That's Totally except expected in the kubernetes world and it should be a non event in most cases, right? So when the node goes not ready the KCCM will now start performing its sync loop and starts Reconfiguring these load balancers just a small note However, is that the node going not ready doesn't necessarily mean that there's a problem with neither The service proxy nor the pod in itself these events are again transient So there's doesn't necessarily mean that the cluster is going to blow up in any way shape or form Now the way the KCCM also goes about syncing these load balancers is non deterministic So it's not in any particular order. So it could be that when this happens For our our load balancer gets the first one is the first one that gets the node a Removed from its set of nodes, right and in our particular example Let's imagine that pod a is the end point for our service, right? So at this point ingress traffic for our service has essentially been halted, right and the KCCM Continues and continues updating all of these load balancers imagine big clusters with In the order of magnitude of hundreds of load balancers The problem here is that to begin with we have a lot of cloud API calls that are being performed by the KCCM and The time to sync any individual load balancer is usually non negligible It can be in the order of seconds maybe even minutes Depending on the state of the cloud provider and the amount of operations that it needs to perform at any given moment in time, right? Now imagine that the node transitions quickly back to ready again Most of you have might have noticed this on a couple of clusters that you self operate Well in that case the KCCM will start reconfiguring and re-adding no node a to all of these load balancers And again, it doesn't do this in any particular order. So it might just be that it finishes with ours Now what's the an additional problem with this is that we risk desynchronizing the cube state? So essentially what Kubernetes knows about services and nodes with the cloud state, which is how the load balancer is Configured and specifically what we've done is we've caused an ingress outage between the moment We removed it and the moment we re-added it and in this particular case like I mentioned the service proxy was running fine And so did the pod so to them there was it was a total moment of I don't know what happened, right? so there's another important problem which is the impact on connectivity and that is to say that whenever the node Transitions to not ready and we remove it all connections get instantly terminated from the load balancer to the node So this introduces network instability across your cluster What do we want instead in this case? Well when we started roughly a year ago We kind of went back to the drawing board and rethought these mechanisms, right? Because you have to remember that most of this was written and implemented in the very early days of Kubernetes this is one of the most core things and common modes of operation for most users of Kubernetes So we wanted to rethink what does node readiness really mean for ingress and for load balancers and specifically also what happens whenever a node terminates and how can we implement a better stable connection for for those cases Essentially, this is important because Terminating nodes on large clusters is also a very frequent event the cluster auto scaler will both upscale and downscale nodes and hence nodes that disappear and come in are very frequent So Given this problem again What we figured was the conclusion now essentially after one years of work was that well We don't want to reconfigure load balancers at all We don't want to have to remove or we add and perform all of these things, right? However, if there is a real problem with the node we need to be able to react to that right and the kind of the ideas behind all of this was that if there's a real problem with the node That can impact either the service proxy the CNI plug-in or even the pod itself Well in that case at one moment the health check will start failing And now health checks that are failing as I mentioned before Enable connection draining for load balancers that support such so essentially new connections won't will be blocked But the established ones will be allowed to terminate and hence we are allowing graceful termination For this nodes connectivity so all services running on the node and all packets, right? And now for terminating nodes, what do we want? Well for terminating new nodes We kind of figured there needs to be a way for the service proxy To realize that the node is actually about to go away. There are mechanisms and Kind of notifiers so to speak in a Kubernetes cluster that allows this to get picked up on Specifically the cluster auto scaler uses a specific taint that it marks the node with Prior to actually starting to drain and delete the node so this Indicator already exists and what we want to do in that case is we want the service proxy to pick up on this and Start failing the health check So that prior to the node actually being deleted and having all of its Connections abruptly terminated that we instead allow a graceful shutdown of all connections Now with regards to all of this where are we? well, we are here essentially 127 just got released and But the work for this didn't really start here. We started already in 1.26 by changing the Mechanisms for reconfiguring load balancers in the Kubernetes cloud controller manager But specifically for external traffic policy local that was noted as more of a important bug fix simply because the options of traffic load balancing for external traffic policy local is Much more reduced than in cluster where all nodes are essentially a possible Next hop for the load balancer to send traffic on However in parallel to that we filed the cap which got merged cap 3458 which aimed at Extending this condition to all service types. So both cluster and local. So starting in 1.27 The KCCM will stop resynchronizing load balancers due to the node readiness condition for all services And it got promoted directly to beta Essentially because the change was sufficiently small and deemed sufficiently stable as such that we could promote it directly to beta for that So it's going to be enabled by default, but users will always have the option to opt out. Should that be the case in Parallel to that another kept was filed 3836 which was very cute proxy specific Which essentially allowed which essentially implements the connection draining mechanism for terminating nodes That unfortunately missed the feature freeze for 127 But the PR is now ready to go and it should hopefully get merged in the 128 feature cycle that should open up pretty soon So given all of this a lot of there are still a couple of things that we can improve on and what I'm going to be presenting right now is Very much on the drawing board. There's absolutely no cap for this at all These are just mainly ideas that have spawned out of discussions on github while we've been working on everything else, right? So the first one is that we would like to somehow decouple the health chick server from the service proxy And this is mainly within the goal of external traffic policy local again because it has less option when it comes to traffic load balancing in general and The problem core problem here is that? The load balancer currently isn't able to discern an unhealthy service proxy From a restarting service proxy the service proxy whenever it's restarting it isn't really running So the HTTP server that runs in the service proxy and answers to the probes from the health from the load balancer Isn't there anymore, right? So the that health check health check is failing and hence it impacts ingress So we would like to work on this and somehow find a way forward to solve it But we haven't really worked out the details of how for the time being Another problem that we would like to solve is Something that has kind of been denoted the majority report which is to say service proxies today They go about configuring the network by both watching services and end points But what happens if there's an issue reading from the API server that has all of this information, right? Well in that case at least in the case of Q proxy what happens is that it will deem itself being unhealthy Simply because it isn't it hasn't updated the IP table rules within the timeout period that it Defines and whenever the health check starts failing well in that case cluster-wide ingress is impacted and in this case It's important to note that the control plane and the data plane even though they cannot communicate for whatever reason What is interesting from the point of view of a user is if the load balancer is able to communicate with the data plane So in this case users of kubernetes are impacted even though there might not necessarily be a Problem observed from their point of view simply because the pod is still running fine and The service proxy just can't read anymore from the API server But presumably all of the networking rules that it needs to be able to forward traffic to the pod still exists on that node There's a lot to work out in this case This is very rough and we don't really have a good idea of how to do this because More likely than not we would need to run some form of consensus mechanism between all agents That is independent of the API server So it's a very difficult problem to solve for the time being but know that these are things that might Happen in very extreme cases But this is a very niche presentation with very specific problems And I hope that none of you experience these but know that they do exist and they might happen Given that I'm a cube con right here And I have a room full of people who might be working on a wide variety of topics I'd like to give a couple of recommendations maybe for the future So if you're a cloud provider here, what I would say is maybe start Rethinking your LB health checks most of these things as I mentioned they were done a very long time ago and They might use attention again Specifically if you'd like to profit from the cube proxy and the terminating node kept It would be benefit you can only benefit from that if you don't health check With the data plane reach ability mode right because you would need to health check using the service proxy mechanism Instead because the service proxy in this case cube proxy is the one that's gonna pick up on the node going away and be and terminating If you're a service proxy instead think about enabling LBs to connection drain it doesn't necessarily mean that they will connection drain because that depends on the load balance or Implementation but what you're doing might be beneficial and it might be very beneficial From a user's point of view of using Kubernetes since it aligns the usability between service proxies This was kind of everything I wanted to present I think you have a QR code here that will lead you to the presentation slides and If you have any questions, well, I will be here or feel free to use the microphone right now Otherwise, thank you so much Hello. Hi Hello Great presentation I'm still a bit confused When it comes to like as far as I understood You had then The cluster and the like the cluster KCCM kind of fighting with the algorithm of health checking, right? like the the the fact that like a node is not responding anymore and a node is not ready is like a kind of different things and like both would Remove it from the both would remove the node from the pool that would actually respond to the requests I like could you expand a little bit more of like what is like Where are the responsibilities of KCCM removing an instance from a load balancer and The load balancer doing it by itself by just labeling an instance as unhealthy like sure so they're kind of differentiated by the fact that The KCCM will reconfigure the load balancer in general So that's how it gets removed and it does this by watching node events as I mentioned The health check is a bit more dynamic in this case. So the health check is Construct that is native to the load balancer So it's much quicker at picking up whenever these things change Then having to reconfigure the load balancers completely Like the KCCM does I Think if you will I'm not exactly sure if I answer your question correctly But if you'd like we can discuss that quickly afterwards. Sure. Thank you. Welcome