My name is Dan Lippert. I'm the VP of Engineering at Gitcoin and today I'm going to talk about sustaining open source software So what do we do at Gitcoin we try to sustain the open source community and One of the ways we've done that is earlier this year. We launched our grants project And what grants basically is it's like patreon, but for open-source software Basically you get recurring revenue for your project and why that's special is If you're an open-source developer Maybe every once in a while you get a donation of one thousand or five thousand dollars at a time and that's really great But what's actually better is if you can count on a recurring amount of donations every month And so we built that project using EIP one three three seven Which is a subscriptions model on ethereum using meta transactions And so basically if you were to donate say 100 die to a project Instead of just sending that 100 die what you can do is Use our DAP Go in select that you want to donate 10 die for 10 months And then you simply do a signature that gets sent to our back end and then we mine those Transactions for you every month using meta transactions So it's a really great way to not just get money but have money that you can count on and as an open-source developer That's really great because it's it's almost like having a day job, right? It's almost like working for some company or some startup where you have that guaranteed paycheck every month One thing that we added on this year is Capital-constrained liberal radicalism and what is that? Basically, it's a way that we can match funds from big donors to our grant recipients and There's a lot of different ways that you can do that but Basically, you can think of two models and CLR is somewhere in between You can think of the the model of one dollar one vote, right? So someone donates a dollar and then we match that with a dollar or ten dollars or a hundred dollars, right? Or you can think of one person one vote So one person makes a donation be that one dollar be that one thousand dollars and then we match that with some predetermined fund Say a thousand dollars Well, what CLR does is it's actually in between it counts the fact that one dollar is not the same to every person, right? But you do want to have that skin in the game So you do want to count the amount of the donation that was made and so CLR is a really nice balance between that Of course, it was created by Vitalik Glenn Weill and zoe Hitzig Definitely check out the paper see the ETH research forums if you want to know more about how CLR works It's a really cool economic model and it's worked out really well for us So you can see here Here's like a demonstration of How the funding model actually works? so you've got Whoops You've got an amount here say two hundred and seventy five dollars And then we match that with another two hundred and seventy five dollars But that's if that's just one contributor making one donation of two hundred and seventy five dollars if that Two hundred seventy five dollars comes from two people. That's a really good signal, right? That means more people are interested in this project. So we match it with even more funds even though It's the same amount two hundred seventy five dollars If you go all the way to the right here if ten people combined donate two hundred and seventy five dollars That's not each person right? That's all combined. That's each person donating like twenty seven dollars That's a really amazing signal that this project means something to the community And so we match it with even more funds and so that's that's kind of the idea behind CLR It's it's not how much you donate it's we're trying to figure out how much people care about a project using their donations as a signal So our first round earlier this year 2019 We had twenty five thousand dollars in our open-source sustainability fund and we fielded $13,000 via hundred and thirty two contributions here were the kind of the winners or the highest ranking projects on our platform Prismatic labs more like now You know a lot of great projects here Ethers J s one of my personal favorites Then we went on to round two and of course each time we want to make it even bigger So we had fifty thousand dollars in our OSS fund this time we fielded fifty six thousand dollars from two hundred and fourteen unique contributions and Here are the projects that did well that round of course the Prague POW technical audit Hopper decentralized Privacy preserving something Plasma group wallet connect uniswap moloch down so another successful round and Round three we had a hundred thousand dollars. So what were the results?  It kind of curves off at the end but Like I said before the important thing is that we know that this person cares about this project You know, we're using your donation as data to match our funds. So So it's a really successful round people were really excited that they were able to see that hey I can donate one dollar and it actually gives over a hundred dollars to this project So here's just some folks from our community I Gave one died of six projects on get coin today and Here were the matches for each project for Austin Griffith 81 die for ethos js 89 die for fuzzing 126 die, so You know six dollars generated hundreds and hundreds of dollars in matching funds Over here we have Ken Digging some die out of his couch so to speak and You know chucking in one die to to make a big difference to these different projects and these open source developers And then another person four dollars into six hundred and forty five dollars Here we see Vitalik excited about our Grant's CLR round three Hudson Jameson as well contributing ten die to five projects and You know, we're really excited when we see this type of community engagement because We feel like for too long. There's been this idea in the community that there are these individual people who have a ton of ether and You can go to them on Twitter. You got a network with people You got to find them you got to have that connection with them And then they'll give you tens of thousands of dollars for your project, right? And so it's it's very centralized, right? We have these individual nodes that control the funding or so people think but actually that's not true, you know As a community we have Hundreds of thousands tens of thousands of people who are interested in open-source software interested in Ethereum and We want their attention and we want their Input as to Where these funds should go? You know what projects are worthwhile for the community? You don't need to have thousands of ether to help us determine which projects are needed And so that was kind of our goal with CLR. That's the goal behind our open-source sustainability fund and So the round three results $100,000 in matching funds and 170,000 across 2,216 unique contributions the elite eight lighthouse Austin Griffith e-thub our die Prism viper the gas stations network and ethers J s So congratulations to the winners of our latest CLR round We're excited for the next round. Our goal is to raise $150,000 for our open-source sustainability fund if you want to contribute reach out to me reach out to Kevin Awakey reach out to a dicha Any of the get coin team members and we'll let you know how you can help out and Finally, I just want to ask what would the world look like if open source was sustainable What would it look like if the people who build these tools could get paid for it and have a guaranteed paycheck every month? Thank you


Okay, I'm curious if anyone knows what this is called. This is my residual limb. It got lopped off a couple of years ago, but every now and again, when I get it in the right position, let me see if I can do it. Yeah, there we go. This is not muscle fatigue. I don't know what it is. It'll just shake like crazy. It's not bad. I just don't know what it is. Let me know in the comment section if you do.


Thank you very much. It is a real pleasure to be back here and I Was here several times in the 1990s helping to organize. I think actually the first time I ever came to Italy was a trip here in around 1986 and three things Really struck out or three. I remember three things from that first trip One was getting to meet Abdul Salam who wanted to know about all the latest developments in string theory The second was Italian pizza and the third was Going into a back room at the Adriatic on being given an envelope with a million lira in it for expenses He's all created a very strong impression It's really nice to be back. So let me start by giving you a plan of the lectures so the first two Lectures I'm going to start by giving you kind of an overview Then I'm going to talk about what might be called Classical moonshine and This involves some elements of what's called monstrous moonshine The subject which was developed starting in the late late 1970s through the 1980s and 1990s so I'll talk about a Particular construction of a conformal field theory due to Franco-Wapowski and Merman that has the monster group as a symmetry I'll talk about what are called Mackay Thompson series and Their connection with all genus zero functions Then I want to talk about something that I think is not Perhaps so well-known in the string theory community, which I've called deconstruction And Called the Grice algebra things called Miyamoto involutions These are topics which appear in this conformal field theory But which I think might have some broader applications to conformal field theory and maybe to ADS through ADS CFT I'll briefly mention Another example classical example Conway moonshine and Briefly perhaps talk about the construction construction of the CFT that has this Conway moonshine So the third and fourth lectures I'm going to talk about a more modern version of moonshine which really started in 2010 and is continuing with the efforts of lots of people and Here I will Tell you a little bit about jacobi forms and Their connection to the n equals to super conformal algebra I'll tell you about the result that revitalized interest in moonshine which Is a result connecting the elliptic genus of a k3 surface with the Matthew group m24 and then I Will tell you a little bit about umbral moonshine, which is an extension of this and I'll talk about the relationship of this to Meromorphic jacobi forms a little bit about something called the discriminant property and and Most of this is going to be fairly mathematical so in the sense that the title of my talk was Moonshine in physics I Will towards the end and sprinkled throughout try to talk about how this might connect to conformal field theory string theory ADS CFT and things like that, but there will be a fair amount which is just Mathematical so let me start by talking about one of the Great theorems of 20th century mathematics Which is the classification? finite simple groups So I assume you all know what a group is and that you all know what a finite group is finite groups don't play as big a role in particle physics as Continuously groups, but they obviously show up in things like the study of crystals and Just to make sure that we're on the same page recall that a normal subgroup And of a group G is a subgroup that's that the left and right cosets are equal and that's written with this funny triangle symbol and Give it a normal subgroup you can put a group structure on the cosets to define the quotient G mod n which allows you to decompose a group G into a smaller group H and finite group theorists often use the notation which I will borrow by writing G is n dot H which means precisely this that G has a normal subgroup n and the quotient of G by that normal subgroup n is the group H so There's a kind of analogy simple groups Are groups that have no normal subgroups? So they can't be decomposed into smaller groups So you can kind of think of a finite simple group as being like a prime number in The sense that you can always decompose numbers into products of primes You can decompose finite simple groups into sort of products not exactly products but using a chain of normal subgroups into smaller and smaller groups and So if you understand the finite simple groups you understand finite groups in the same way that once you understand primes You kind of understand all numbers So the classification theorem is the statement that all finite simple groups are either in one of a set of infinite families of groups and the first family is usually written by physicists like this it's the cyclic group with P prime the alternating groups a n for n greater than or five consisting of permutations even permutations of n objects and Then there are what are called simple groups of lead type and These come in families, which I'm not going to discuss in great detail. They're classical exceptional listed and basically what these involve are taking groups of lead type that you lead groups that you're familiar with and Writing them as groups over finite fields. So for example, we're all familiar with the group SL2 But you can take SL2 two by two matrix with determinants one over the group with seven elements and That defines a finite simple group turns out to have order 168 and Similarly, you can take some plectic groups or thogonal groups and there's even a way of doing this for exceptional groups And there are various twistings of it But essentially what you get are something like six or seven infinite families of finite simple groups where you look at, you know Classical matrix groups over larger and larger matrices over fields with a finite number of elements and then There are 26 sporadic groups, which don't fit into any of these infinite families and these 26 groups are sometimes usefully viewed as a group of 20 Called the happy family finite group theorists like funny names These are all subgroups of M Which is the monster group, which is the largest sporadic group and Then there are things called the pariahs, which are not subgroups of Monster group there are six of them These funny initials don't necessarily mean anything But actually they're associated with names so J stands for Janko, O for Onan, R U for Rudvalis, L Y for Lyons and The groups in the happy family can be further Usefully organized into a set of kind of generations so the first generation Which are the first sporadic groups to be discovered are the Matthew groups M11 M12 M22 M23 4 There's a second generation All related to the leech lattice, which I'll talk about a little bit. These are all groups which either arise from automorphisms of leech lattice or automorphisms of the leech lattice that fix some number of points in the leech lattice So they're related to subgroups of a group called Conway zero, which is the groups of automorphisms of the leech lattice and They include other so simple Conway groups three of them This is a Zuki group Bofflin group the Higman sig sig Higman sigs group. I think and one of the Janko groups and Then there's a third generation consisting of some Fisher groups Thompson group Herata Norton the held group the baby monster and the monster now So far I would have to say this is a really bad introduction because all I've done is put a bunch of letters down Without explaining what any of them are all these funny names This is the monster. This is the baby monster so The reason that this is interesting is that this classification and this kind of structure just comes out of pure mathematics But it seems that the best way of understanding many of these groups and many of their features At least for those in the happy family Involves conformal field theory string theory string compactification on Calabi outspaces and that's very peculiar so in the string theory literature I went through The papers that I could find and I may have missed one or two, but I looked at all the papers Involving various aspects of moonshine both from the old days and more recently and in those papers You will find a set of groups that are Linked to the automorphism groups of particular super conformal field theories. So the monster is The automorphism group of a C equals 24 conformal field theory The baby monster is the automorphism group of a conformal field theory With C equals 23 plus a half and I'll tell you roughly how it's constructed The Conway group is the automorphism group of a super conformal field theory with C equals 12 M23 and M22 Are also automorphism groups of super conformal field theories that preserves an n equals 2 or an n equals 4 super conformal algebra. These are all kind of classical examples And It turns out that in further pursuing moonshine many of these other groups like the Thompson group the Suzuki group and the Clawson group also show up so in some way that I would say we really don't understand the right framework for studying these sporadic groups seems to involve conformal field theory and aspects of string theory and That's kind of what I want to explain I want to use techniques that come from conformal field theory to explain some of the structure where these groups are coming from what kind of things you can learn about these groups and You know the eventual goal I think here is not just to use string theory to learn about finite group theory, but rather to understand Why it is that there's a connection between these sporadic groups, which are rather bizarre exceptional strange objects and string theory and string theory is supposed to be a theory of quantum gravity Why is it also a theory of so many of these sporadic groups and? I Think there are two reasons to think that there might be something to be learned One is that although some of these theories in terms of compactifications are Compactifications down to two dimensions so for example for a sequence 24 theory you could use that to compactify the bosonic string or the heteronic string down to two dimensions Which doesn't seem very physical, but by ADS CFT we might learn something about three-dimensional gravity and some of these other groups like M24 are connected to compactifications on K3 surfaces and Compactifications on K3 Are kind of you know everywhere in string theory Both in string duality and in looking at string Compactification on Calabi outspaces many Calabi outspaces are K3 vibrations And so if you understand something about Special about super conformal field theories related to K3 you understand something about more general kinds of string compactifications so that's sort of my motivation and I Won't say you know, I think it's enough justification to look at something. It's rather mathematical All right, so the examples that I've described here are examples of what I would call classic moonshine classic in that they were first done You know a number of years ago and also in the sense that there is an explicit conformal field theory construction Which realizes these symmetry groups so in the constructions the particular sporadic group of interest commutes with the very sorrow algebra and so if we look at the partition function of the theory and For the moment, I'm just going to be focusing on the holomorphic part of the theory Then this is going to have a Q expansion The function of the parameter tau Labels the one-loop partition function of the theory Such that Z of tau will be a modular form general of some level meaning some subgroup of the full modular group and Such that this coefficient C of n will be sums Dimensions of irreducible representations of sporadic group G That is a symmetry of the conformal field theory commuting with very sorrow That's since you know C to the n is counting the degeneracy of states at a given l not eigenvalue That follows from the fact that the group commutes with the very sorrow algebra It's trivial, but what I'm about to say will put some meat on it so It's sometimes I think said in the physics the physics papers that moonshine is essentially some kind of connection between Finite groups often chosen to be you know interesting large groups and modular forms But it's really more than that because if that's all it was it's trivial to make Examples and the things that really deserve the name moonshine are more special than this so for example Take any lattice L You can make lattices with all sorts of interesting symmetry groups You can just take a hexagonal limit lattice which has a you know hexagonal symmetry But you can take very large lattices that have all sorts of interesting exotic symmetries and you can consider string theory on RD mod L if L has ranked D and This defines a C equals D conformal field theory or in the math literature of VOA with a Symmetry which is the automorphism group of that lattice and a partition function Z of tau which will exhibit the symmetry So in this way you could exhibit moonshine in this sense for almost any group And I think many of the sporadic groups even the ones that are not part of the happy family Can be viewed as automorphism groups or subgroups of automorphism groups of large lattices But moonshine requires more than this It requires a certain rigidity and that rigidity is usually connected with genus zero subgroups of SL2R so you need also a kind of rigidity and Exactly what form this rigidity takes Buries from case to case But in the case of monstrous moonshine and also in the Conway Shine this rigidity Appears in the following way if you have a symmetry Group G and you have an element G in G That acts on the state space of the conformal field theory then you can consider a twined version of the partition function where you take the trace of G In each eigenspace of L naught and These Objects will be modular forms Well in general you would expect them to be subgroups of SL2Z Because only certain elements of SL2Z will leave this boundary condition fixed But in fact they often turn out to be modular forms for certain finite or discrete subgroups That are a little bit larger than SL2Z. So I'll just say subgroups of SL2R and In the case of monstrous and Conway moonshine. These are all genus zero subgroups so Sorry Discrete sorry. Yeah, discrete subgroups. I was just about to say that Yes, they're weight zero the partition function is weight zero and these twine versions of them are also weight zero All right, so what what do I mean by genus zero? Well, let's Recall from string theory That the fundamental domain For the modular group is the following region bounded by So this is the tau plane So bounded by these lines at the real part of tau is equal to a half and minus a half and lying above the semicircle How equals one? So in other words under Elements of SL2Z any point in the upper half plane can be mapped to this fundamental domain F and If you want to be a little more precise you should actually include this part of the boundary Because this is mapped to this by tau goes to tau plus one and this is mapped to this region by tau goes to minus 1 over tau so this is a fundamental domain in its boundary and You can take this fundamental domain and what does it look like it looks kind of like this It has these cusp points here because their elements of order three that leave these point fixed There's kind of a cusp off at infinity and you can map this fundamental domain by a function It's usually called J of tau To the Riemann sphere in other words as tau varies over this fundamental domain There's a complex function J of tau which maps this fundamental domain one to one onto points on the Riemann sphere So whenever you have this situation H being the upper half plane with coordinate tau and you have some Subgroup Which I'll call let's say gamma G Of SL2R which acts on the upper half plane And whenever there's a function TG which maps this to the Riemann sphere Then you say that gamma G is a genus zero subgroup and the function TG of tau is Called the help module for that group these genus zero subgroups are Kind of special There are many many subgroups, which are not genus zero And some examples will come up later So if you consider gamma not n Which consists of elements of the modular group such that C is congruent to zero mod n Then this is genus zero and is equal to two three four up to ten and then twelve thirteen sixteen eighteen and 25 if memory serves me right But for no other values event So going back to Zohar's question It's absolutely true that if you take The coefficients C of n you can always decompose them Into trivial sums of the trivial representation or you can decompose them into different ways But this condition That first of all this be modular and in some cases that it be modular and be a genus zero Subgroup is extremely constraining and untrivial and will fix what the decompositions are in general And is also what makes moonshine More than just a connection between modular forms and finite groups It really Turned it into something that's rather special. Yes. I guess so. Yes. I mean I'm not sure what is the question of terminology or I've seen this terminology used but I'm not a hundred percent sure what it means. So I I'm not sure I should Say anything but I can but it is true That if gamma g is a discrete subgroup of SL2R I can take the quotient of the upper half plane by this group and this will define a two-dimensional surface Which can have genus zero one two three, etc. Depending on the exact form of the group. So I mean, I think that's the correct statement and the particular cases that arise in in moonshine or genus zero So I'm going to I will I will spell out some of the details of this because I know this has been very broad brush But I just wanted to say I mean still it's kind of part of the overview that These examples which I'll talk about in more detail are the examples of classical moonshine where there is a CFT But the more modern versions of moonshine involve Different structures which are less well understood So in particular they involve Mach modular forms which I will define for you Rather than modular forms they involve groups which are related Emeyer lattices which I will Say more about in a moment and There is a connection Which I would say is not perfectly understood To case three surfaces and maybe to more general Calabria manifolds So for this more modern kind of moonshine There is no general explicit CFT Vertex operator algebra string theory background wherever you want to call it construction There are hints of connections black hole Eps state counting which I'll mention when we get there and there are also some hints of relations between Classical and modern moonshine the whole situation is murky because the hints are just that they're not direct connections and Because we don't have an explicit Construction there are a lot of results that that Can be derived without complete understanding So all right, so that's kind of what I would like to tell you about first starting with the classical moonshine and we'll start with a discussion of monstrous moonshine From a conformal field theory and string theory point of view So we can think about this in terms of a compactification of the bosonic string So you know that if we compactify the bosonic string on a d-dimensional torus There is a norene moduli space of compactifications which has the form of a double coset and You move around in this moduli space by varying the constant metric and two form fields on the torus and The general point norene moduli space is you know Not a complicated, but it's not a rational conformal field theory in that you have an infinite number of Terms in the partition function it doesn't holomorphically factorize in terms of some finite number of Characters of some larger algebra, but we can go to special points and one of those special points arises when d is equal to 24 Where we can take the even self-dual lattice of momenta to simply be Direct sum for lambda is an even self-dual rank 24 lattice So this situation generalizes a Construction which shows up often in string theory That is if you want to have an even self-dual lattice then that only occurs when D is a multiple of eight and When D is equal to eight the unique answer is the E8 root lattice when D is equal to 16 You can have the E8 E8 root lattice or you can have a weight lattice of spin 32 mods E2 Those of course are the gauge groups of the heterotic string And then in 24 dimensions, there's the leach lattice and there are 23 other lattices called nemire lattices These nemire lattices are not Well, they play various roles But let me say just a bit about them because they will show up later when we talk about umbil moonshine So they are they are constructed starting from a root lattice of a D or E type Meaning you take sums of root lattices of a and d n or e6 e7 and e8 Yes, could you speak up? No, no, it's no. No, this is purely a spatial compactification So I'm assuming that time and one of the spatial dimensions are non-compact. So if you take an ade Some of ade root lattices with total rank 24 such that each component has equal coccidron number and What is the coccidron number? Well, if you have the root lattice, let's say so here's the root lattice of Su3 there are always vile reflections where you reflect in the hyperplane that is Orthogonal to the root and For any root lattice there is a group an element of the group of such reflections called the coccidron element Which is the product over the simple roots it's the positive simple roots of these vile reflections and the order of that Element is called the coccidron number So I can give you a little table of what these are So for a m minus one The answer is m So in particular for a one, which is su2 It's the order is two. It's just a single reflection for a two, which is su3. The order is three Corresponding to the three-fold symmetry of that lattice for d1 plus m over 2 So for the orthogonal groups the answer is m and for e6 e7 and e8 The answer is 12, 18, and 30 So here's a little exercise using what I've just provided you classify the root systems x that have rank 24 and equal coccidron number and you'll find That there are 23 examples a 1 to the 24th is obviously ranked 24 and all the components have the same coccidron number a 2 to the 12th is another example Then they're turned out to be more complicated things like a 11 d7 e6 Which also has ranked 24 and using that table has equal coccidron number and then This continues and you get things like e6 to the fourth and e8 cubed Alright, so these things will appear later But for right now, I want to consider a compactification where we don't choose any of these But we choose the leach lattice So we'll choose for our compactification the leach lattice Which is the unique Even self dual rank 24 lattice with No roots Meaning that the set of elements in the leach lattice With length squared 2 with the usual normalization Is the empty set there are no points of length squared 2 Instead the shortest vectors have length squared 4. Yes, but which classification? well in the I Haven't really told you why The Neymar lattices only involve ADE, but it's just a statement. I mean for B and C There's certainly a coccidron number. There's a coccidron element, but they're not they have roots of different length so they're not simply laced and For reasons that I think would involve much more detail You can't use them to construct even self dual lattices in this way It possible. Sorry say that again my vial reflection in what I'm really so I'm I'm really considering compactifications Where I have a 24-dimensional torus and then either R11 or if you want to work in Euclidean signature R2 But everything that I'm talking about all the vial reflections are Occurring in this 24 Dimensional spatial part of the compactification and I really haven't assumed or said anything about what's happening in the remaining two non-compact dimensions so You know you can work in In Kowsky or Euclidean signature sort of as you please and the vial reflections don't act here at all You could consider Compactifications down to you know one or zero dimensions where you try to compactify this part as well That gets into all sorts of kind of complicated and subtle issues which are not relevant for what I'm discussing and I wouldn't you know I don't necessarily have to talk about this in the context of string theory, but I could just talk about C equals 24 conformal field theories But I think there are a few useful things to be said when you think about it in terms of string theory Compactifications, so that's why I'm doing that. All right, so for the theory that's related to monstrous moonshine we pick the leach lattice and The partition function of this theory Then completely factorizes Into the theta function of the leach lattice divided by 8th to the 24th Where the theta function of the leach lattice is a sum over elements of leach lattice due to the lambda squared over 2 and From now on we can focus just on the holomorphic degrees of freedom and Once we do that we can then decide what we want to do with the anti-holomorphic degrees of freedom We can do something to them we can consider boundary conditions to define d-brains etc etc But the construction that I want to talk about just involves a holomorphic part And that's a legitimate thing to do since we've chosen a point in the ring moduli space Where the theory factorizes and purely into a holomorphic and an anti-holomorphic part. All right, so let me First of all tell you what the construction of Frankel and Wipowski and Merman Involves in terms of conformal field theory language So if we look at the states and the CFT that we've just described Defined by string theory on the leach lattice and we look at the holomorphic part there are states which are Fox-based ground states I have 24 free bosons, so I have 24 Oscillators which annihilate the ground state The zero mode I'll call p hat I and I build up a Fox base from this ground state in the usual way by acting with the creation operators clearly the partition function of this theory has a contribution from the vacuum It has a contribution from the first excited state of which there are 24 and then this factor of 1 9 6 8 8 4 comes from states alpha minus 2 Alpha minus 1 I alpha minus 1 j and states on the leach lattice that have length squared equal to 4 So there are 24 states here There are 24 times 25 over 2 here and There are 1 9 6 5 6 0 states here And if you add up these three numbers you'll get 1 9 6 8 8 4 so this Partish the partition function of this theory is equal to the j function up to a constant and It is a weight zero modular function Which is the help module or a help module? or a modular group and It's unique given a constant term and the fact that it starts with Q inverse and It was famously Noticed by John Mackay That 1 9 6 8 8 4 Equal to 1 9 6 8 8 3 plus 1 and This is a song of the dimensions of the first new irreducible representations of the monster sporadic group at least where you order them by their size and This was regarded as you know being so shocking and astonishing at the time Because at the time there wasn't wasn't an understanding that you naturally get weight zero modular forms in conformal field theory so 24 however is not the dimension of Anything other than 24 copies of the one dimensional representation, so that looks a little bit odd and What Frank Lopowski and Merman figured out how to do was to take this theory and Modify it to get rid of that term and To give you a theory that has the monster group as its automorphism group, so I want to tell you what the modification is and In the next lecture, I'll tell you some things about How you can see that the monster is the automorphism group, but I'm not going to be able to give you a full Explanation because that's a rather long involved story But I'll try to tell you about some useful things that you can do using the conformal field three point of view So what Frank Lopowski and Merman proposed to do was to consider a asymmetric Z to orbifold of this theory Where you take the holomorphic part of the left moving coordinates and do an orbifold By a minus one Action so the partition function of their theory as usual is going to be Trace in the untwisted Hilbert space that we've just constructed of The projection operator on to G invariant states Maybe I shouldn't call this G. Let me call it theta So I don't confuse it with elements of the monster And then in order to have modular invariance, we know in orbifolds we have to include a twisted Hilbert space and In that Hilbert twisted Hilbert space. We also have to project on to invariant states and this it will turn out is equal to J of tau with no constant term and with the monster group as It's automorphism group So my automorphism group I really mean that there's a symmetry of the theory which would preserve OPEs correlation functions, etc. The full structure of the conformal field theory Yes, yeah so, I mean Well, let me so I'll tell you briefly what this involves So what happens when we do the z to orbifold? Well, first of all we project on to the invariant states So if I look over here These states have eigenvalue minus one under the z to action so they will disappear These states have eigenvalue minus one these have plus one of these states Well, I'll have to construct linear combinations Which have eigenvalue plus or minus one under the Orbifold action So it's not too hard to see That this part of the theory Simply gives a contribution, which is one half data leech over to the 24th, which is just one half of one and Then the action of theta well theta takes states with momentum lambda to those with momentum minus lambda so they don't contribute to the trace so the only things contributing to the trace here are the oscillator states and Because they have eigenvalue minus one Under the action of theta I get a one plus q to the n rather than a one minus q to the n from the trace of theta and Then we need to compute what the trace is in the twisted sector and In the twisted sector We have boundary conditions the Xi has to come back to itself up to a minus sign and Normally this would mean that the ground state is labeled by the fixed points But in an asymmetric orbifold, that's not the right answer Modular invariance requires The a to go from one to the square root of a number of fixed points if you were to think of this as a symmetric transformation and I'll say a bit more in a minute about why that's the case so actually a goes from one up to two to the twelfth rather than two to the twenty-four and Given that you can then compute the contribution to the partition function in the twisted sector So there's a two to the twelfth from this ground state degeneracy there's a q to the half and this a half is minus one Plus three halves this three halves is 24 over 16 And that's using the fact that the twist field for a single boson has dimension 16 and we're twisting 24 of them And then in the twisted sector I have half in a demoted Oscillators and then I have to include the projection on them. So if you Add these up to compute the total partition function You can write it in terms of the usual Jacobi theta theta functions And you can show That it has precisely effect of killing the 24 and leaving everything else as it was before Now this more or less had to work Because as long as the orbifold Satisfies level matching so preserves modular invariance you had to get a weight zero modular form here The tachyon survives so this has to start as q to the minus one So the only thing that's undetermined given that it's modular invariant is the constant term and the constant term is Clearly zero because you kill The states that contributed to it and in the twisted sector The all the states are massive because the dimension of the twist field is three halves So this form follows just from the fact that this twist preserves modular invariance. What time did I start? 1030, okay, I guess that means I'm done with this lecture but I'll just I guess I'm giving another one soon. So I Just want to tell you a little bit about what we're going to do It turns out Well, so one thing we would like to do is to see some evidence that this theory actually has the monsters at symmetry group I'm not going to be able to show you that in detail, but I Do want to show you how a number of aspects of The group structure of the monster are evident in this orbital construction And then I want to tell you about an interesting construction That constructs a kind of an algebra that was connected with the monster before this conformal field theory Understanding and that I think has more general application And I want to also show you how the baby monster can be extracted from this using a technique Which really follows just from the structure of conformal field theory. So we'll do those three things this afternoon


Derek, y pob hyn yng Nghymru i Lleidon Orient, what are your thoughts on the game? It's a game that we've created some really good opportunities in the game. We've created 12 opportunities to later Orients Five. We've been in there half of the park for a good spell in the game. We just haven't been able to create that opening that was going to get us the lead in the game. We've been playing well in large spells, but Lleidon Orient went ahead against her on a play, a poor goal from my point of view, but a terrific finish from Lleidon Orient. We saw the character that's in the dressing room to get us back into the game. It wasn't easy, and we just kept on pushing and pushing at Lleidon Orient, and eventually we got a great goal from early at war. But before that we've had openings where we've just passed a post from headers, from shots, that quite easily have gone into the back of the net. Over the 90 minutes we've shown tremendous character to get back into the game, and even to try and get that winner. You mentioned that character, particularly when we conceded. Is there an argument that could potentially be made for us conceding the goal too late in the game, not giving ourselves enough time to get the equaliser and then push on for the winner off? Yeah, but I think that we were the team in that first half trying to get that first goal. We didn't come under really any pressure from Lleidon Orient. It was us at the one we were doing the pushing, and just unfortunate, as it has been so many times this season, we either haven't taken the right pass or haven't been able to find the finish. Would a lead at halftime being beneficial, obviously, we know what happened at the weekend, and we took the goal leading to halftime and then ended up throwing it away, as we've mentioned, is that what we were pushing for, and would we have the confidence to have held onto it and then having learnt what we learnt in the week? Yeah, I mean, of course, I think that, you know, we've got a group here that, you know, want to do well and, you know, get ourselves out of that league, and you're showing, you know, the mentality in the squad, and we're always trying to push to get that first goal, unfortunate, you know, we didn't get that in the first half tonight. The character in terms of coming back into the game and taking it upon ourselves to attack Lleidon Orient once we conceded, but also the pressure that, I guess, was coming from the stands and the vibrations that were being felt. That's what you want to see in your players as well, isn't it, fronting up and dealing with that kind of expectation? Yeah, of course, I think that in life, you know, you have to push yourself.  How do we go on better at Harroghan Saturday? Do you think in areas it's still a case of us not being as clinical as we could be? Yeah, of course, you know, when we create the opportunities, opportunities in the opposition, then we've just got to be better in front of goal and we had, you know, some really good opportunities tonight that, you know, could offer and probably should have gone in the back of the net.


I am not in the Christmas spirit. I just, I got no Christmas spirit happening at all. You know what I do have happening? Come here, come here. Come here, come here. Come here, say hi to everybody for once. It's like he's right here. He's standing right behind the screen right out of you so you can't see him, but he's here. He's here. He hasn't been on the show as much, but he's here and now he's like, now he's gotta, okay, I don't necessarily want your butt in my face. So you can go, yeah, go on, have tons of fun. Hello, everyone. Who we got here? Hello, Joe Fan and Colonel Chrome and Matt. And hey, it's Chris from Comic Tropes. Really nice to see you. Also nice to see you, Payne's Toy Samples. Oh, I don't want to spoil anything. I don't want to give away anything for Toba Convergence. There's a lot coming up. Hello, Ray Paz and Computron and Jeffrey and Cobra Island and Matt and Lester and Keldon and Zemot and Andrew Andrew, the guy so nice they named him twice. Hello, Mary Ann. It's so nice to see you. I did not get to see Mary Ann today so it's nice to see her here at the very least. Hello, Victor and Peter and anyone else who snuck in here that I wasn't able to say hi to. Hello, the 80s guy. Yeah, so the truth is, I'm not feeling a whole lot of the Christmas spirit. That's just the mood I'm in. I don't have a Christmas tree up. I have gifts to give to people but I don't have them wrapped. They're not wrapped in colorful paper to look beautiful and eye pleasing, beautiful and eye pleasing, sort of redundant. But anyway, so I've got nothing Christmas here. If you looked around this place, you would not be able to tell that it's Christmas. But I understand that there may be one to you that are in the festive spirit. So I'm trying to get into the proper mood, the proper festive spirit, the best that I can. And I suppose if I can't have the Christmas spirit, I can look like Christmas. That's the least I can do. That's the least I can do. Let's see, Marianne says we can pull the tree out the next time I come over. That's probably a pretty good idea. We should probably lube it up first before we pull it out. That's otherwise that's gonna be an uncomfortable operation. But we should, I've had to sit funny. I've had to kind of lean as I sit. So it's probably a good time to pull it out. Good suggestion. Thank you, my dear. Always, always nice. Yes, I deserve coal. In fact, do I even deserve coal? Probably not. So yeah, it's really close to Christmas. We are deep in the holiday season and Comic Trope says, what do you want for Christmas? I would like a day off. But Santa doesn't deliver days off, it seems. So yeah, I guess the next livestream, really next Tuesday will be the 26th, the day after Christmas. I assume I will be doing a livestream next Tuesday. I don't really see any reason why not. However, I may have other plans on New Year's Eve. That's still a little bit up in the air, but I don't know if I'll be doing a livestream for New Year's Eve, but the day after Christmas, as far as I know, I will be live as usual. So hello everyone, welcome to the livestream. If this is your first time here, this is pretty much how it is all the time. You know, this is just how it goes. Oh no, Sparkster's mother is in the hospital. Well, get well soon to her and our sympathies to her and please, if you can, keep us posted and hopefully that she can recover and enjoy the holidays. But I completely sympathize Sparkster and I'm so sorry she's having a hard time. Hello AbsorbVids, hello White Vegeta, hello Agent Chuckles, hello to, I think I've said hello to everyone that I can see on the screen. Hello Cheapest Big Spender, hello, hello Joefan84, hello to Mr. S. If Mr. S is here. So, I don't have any notes, I don't have any notes. But at the top of the show, I do want to, I wanna mention that since it's Tuesday there is a new episode of Half the Battle. This time Timmer looked at the retro Duke. Also, after this show, there is what's on JoeMine live and I will be on what's on JoeMine. I'll be a guest on that show. So after this show is over, I will have to race over to the what's on JoeMine studios to be on what's on JoeMine directly after this episode. Hello Rachel, hello, Mr. S is out caroling. Hello Greg, hello from the Hilt. It's really great to see you guys. It's really great to be here. Hello Albert Glass. Thank you all for being here. We're gonna, I don't have, like I said, I don't have notes, but we're gonna soldier through anyway. Also, you can take bets in the chat about whether I'm gonna jab myself in the eye with a metal hook live on camera. It could happen. I'm just saying that there's a non-zero probability that it'll happen. So I've got metal hooks near my eyes. So if anybody would like to take bets, if anybody would like to take bets, if I will make it through this live stream with both eyeballs intact. So new Half the Battle, new what's on JoeMine tonight right after this. The links are in the description. So just pop down to the description and hit the links. So you can watch Timur's new show and see me again. If you haven't had enough of me after an hour, then see me again on what's on JoeMine. Hey, hello, Toy Connections. It's a hoody Christmas. That's right. It's some kind of Christmas after all. See, yeah, that's, Mary Ann raises a good point. We are, I'm close enough to a hospital. So if it happens, I'm actually really close to a hospital. So if I do injure myself live, I'll just take this with me, right? I'll just keep the live stream rolling. We'll run to the hospital. I'll get a glass eye or whatever they do. Oh, and then I'll race over to the what's on JoeMine's studio so that I can be live with what's on Joe. You wouldn't think that something as simple as gouging my eye out would keep me from appearing on what's on JoeMine. No, sir, no, sir, I will be there with bulbs on. With bulbs on. So hello, blue Libra. Who else snuck in here without me saying hi? Hello, Daruti and David Andrews. Thank you guys for being here. We are simulcasting on Facebook. For the first time, we are simulcasting on Facebook. Will it work? I have no idea. I've never done it before. So we will see. Well, you know, it's an experiment. If it works, then we might do it again. Thank you, Comic Tropes for the Super Chat. That's very nice. Merry Christmas and thanks for all the entertainment. I will thank you for all the entertainment, Chris. And it's always a privilege to have Chris from Comic Tropes here. One of my favorite shows and one of my favorite people and someone that, you know, if you do anything like this, if you do, you know, the YouTubes or the, you know, the other social medias, it's a good idea to have someone that you can, you know, bounce ideas off of, somebody that you can kind of talk, shop with, but also kind of talk about things that things that you have to deal with when doing this kind of thing that most other people don't have to deal with, it's nice to know that there's someone out there who understands. So that's, and Chris has been an excellent friend for a number of years now and has been in several videos. So thank you, Chris. And thank you for the Super Chat, but thank you for being here, most of all. So hello, John. Hello, Palpatine. I think I said hello to David Andrews, but hello again, David Andrews. And Rachel is checking on the Facebook. So the Facebook is working. So that's nice. Oh, and thank you, the 80s guy for watching after seeing me on Comic Trose. That's very nice. I very much appreciate that. And behind the scenes, you know, Chris is a really great guy. Chris is a great guy, a great friend. And you can't say that about everyone behind the scenes.  And there are egos involved. And when you find someone who's genuinely nice, it's special. And I have to say that about the people that I work with. I can say that legitimately about Timmer. Timmer is one of the most genuinely good people that I know. So, you know what, I'm not sure I should keep talking because you know what's happening? It's getting me into fricking Christmas spirit. And I'm too grumpy, all right? I'm too humbuggery. Is humbuggery a word? It sounds really dirty. But you know what? We're gonna make it a word. I'm too deep in my humbuggery. I don't wanna be in a Christmas spirit. I'm too bitter, I'm too angry. So talking about all this people who are good and nice out in the world, it's just tearing me up too much. So you guys cut it out. Favorite Christmas songs. I like that one that just repeats oh Christmas tree over and over and over. That's my favorite. And let's see, I know I missed some comments. I'm sorry. I missed a ton of comments and I do this all the time. And I might as well apologize for it now because as soon as I start pontificating, my eyes shut off and I become incapable of reading the chat. And I feel terrible about that because I really want to say hello to everyone that's here. You guys, Marianne can attest to this. Sometimes I'm not necessarily in the mood to do a live stream but once I do it, I feel better. The energy that I get from talking with you guys really does lift my spirits. It might even lift my spirits into Christmas. The spirits may even be lifted all the way into the holiday season. Oh, thank you, cheapest big spender. Thank you for the super chat. So are you going to look like one of the ghosts from Scrooge on What's on Joe Mind? That's a fun idea. Maybe you and the honcho can have your cats have a stare down that's, where did he go? That would be fun. Free that gung ho. Oh yeah, show him the Christmas spirit. Let's see. I keep forgetting about the gung ho here. Now I want to cover a few things. I want to make sure I cover my topics but it would be really nice though to free gung ho for Christmas. He's been entombed there for too long. Let me try to thank you again for the super chat. Let me try to get to through my topics. I don't have notes. I don't have notes but I do have topics. And because I've been thinking, I've been thinking about stuff and whatnot. And that usually is the start of all the trouble is when I start thinking about stuff and whatnot. Yeah, that is the truth. Once I'm here and once I'm talking with you guys even if I'm not in the best of moods by the end of it I am in a much better mood. Really this kind of interaction that I have with you guys it really does a lot for me and I appreciate it. Thank you very much. I've been thinking and it's what have I been thinking about? I've been thinking about Hasbro. And that's why we have the title saying nice things about Hasbro sort of. So being that it's the holiday season and I should be generous and give gifts to people and everything. I was thinking about nice things to say about Hasbro but it's a little more complex an issue than it seems on the surface.  One of my ball, the one, hold on. I may be able to reach it. I'm not sure. Oh, I forgot I was gonna get eggnog for this show but I forgot. Hold on, give it. No, it was the bulb that looks like a plug. You know, that kind of plug. You know what I'm talking about? It looks like one of those plugs. That's the bulb that fell off. Merry Christmas everyone. I've been thinking, oh, that's the wrong side. I can't have two balls. Well, I don't know. Can I have two balls on one side? Let's see. That's, you know, I think that's art. I think that's art, you know.  So, you know, I'm going with this at least for now because it's art. So, I've been thinking about Hasbro and thinking of nice things to say. That's the trick, right? And my apologies in advance that once I start soliloquizing, all right, once I start pontificating, I have a very hard time that's very distracting. I have a very hard time keeping up with the chat but I will do my best to catch up with the chat when I stop to take a breath. So, okay, Hasbro, what can I say nice about Hasbro? Well, for starters, I've got to acknowledge that Hasbro is a corporation. It's not a person, it's an entity. Some years ago, there was a bit of a kerfuffle about corporations being, you know, deemed as people. What corporations are, are legally fictitious persons. They are not real people, they are fictitious people but they are only people in a very narrow legal sense so that they can buy and sell property so they can sue and be sued in their own names and they can be held accountable for the actions of the entity. They are not people in the sense that they, they don't have a vast swath of the rights that natural real people have, they can't vote. They do have a limited form of free speech in that, well, commercial speech has a different standard than private speech, restrictions on commercial speech are, they face a lower level of scrutiny than other forms of speech. But this idea of a corporation as a monolithic entity is, it's an easy one to get wrapped up in and it's an easy one to start to make some errors in analysis and in thought. The idea of Hasbro as a person is a metaphor. So you have to, when you're using metaphors like that you have to acknowledge that they are metaphors not the actual thing. What Hasbro is as a company, it's made up of a lot of people. Some of them do a great job, some of them do a terrible job and it's not quite as easy to assign credit or blame for something that the company does. And to complicate things more, sometimes you can assign credit or blame to something the company does. So you can have one part of the company doing great stuff and other parts of the company doing terrible stuff. So my thoughts about Hasbro, my approach to Hasbro I try to keep it based on what it really is rather than any metaphor about what it is. So Hasbro is a company that produces one toy line that I like and I don't even like everything from the toy line. They have one toy line that I like and some of the things that I like and some of the things I don't like that's my relationship to Hasbro. So that being the case, I could say that Hasbro I could give credit to Hasbro for producing stuff that I like, that I've loved for years and years and are still producing stuff that I really, really enjoy but they also produce a bunch of stuff that I really don't like, that I greatly dislike, that I've always disliked. I could congratulate one part of Hasbro for designing really good toys and for promoting GI Joe and giving us some excellent GI Joe product over the last few years. I could also criticize another part of Hasbro for laying off people during the holidays and they're both different parts of the same entity of the same company, they're under the same umbrella. So it becomes really difficult to put it into context. I think it's a great way to praise a corporate entity and it's, I hate to say it, but it's easier to blame the corporate entity when something goes wrong. I'm trying to be fair. So my goal is always to be fair. So the nice thing I'm gonna say about Hasbro as a whole, but the people that have been in charge of GI Joe, not just this group, but past groups, we know of several former brand managers for GI Joe who have been a part of the community or have at least talked and communicated with the community and they all seem to really care. They all seem to really care about GI Joe, that they enjoy it, they love it and they do their best to produce a good product for the rest of us. So to all of them past and present, I say thanks, thank you for working hard and sometimes I'm sure having to swim upstream to get some of these things produced because the flip side, thank you for the Super Chat, Watson Joe Mine, where the hell singing cats doubled? Well, that's, thank you. Look, you got like, there were literal cats here. There were literal cats and now he's over there. I did get the cat on the screen. I'll see, as soon as the show's over, I will be racing over to the Watson Joe Mine Studio to appear on the Watson Joe Mine show. Thank you guys, thanks for being here. So thank you to them, thank you to them. Hasbro as a company though, it's a bit of a mixed bag because while marketers and toy designers and sculptors and all of those people who kind of work together to produce the product, they have to care about what you think of the product and whether you're gonna buy the product, otherwise it's not successful. But the goal of the company is to make money. That's the goal of the company is to make money. They don't necessarily, how they make money is probably less important than making money. So I mean, there's no telling what kind of GI Joe products we might have had if maybe a little bit more risk were taken here or there, if a little bit more budget were allocated here or there. But we will never know. What we do know is that for the 50th anniversary of the line, it got canceled.  GI Joe is back in various forms now, which I think is great, but there's also been a bunch of layoffs at the company at a really terrible time and more are coming. More layoffs are coming. So that's why I can't, first of all, I can't hate the entire entity of Hasbro because I know there are people in it that have done some great things that we still enjoy now. But I also like, I can't, I don't think I'm gonna be able to do that. I don't think I'm gonna be able to do that. But I also like, I can't love the entity of Hasbro because there's the flip side of it. There is the decision making that's placed the company in a position where they have to lay a bunch of people off. Those are choices that were made. Those are the results of choices that were made by the company. And the people that I would praise and the people that I would criticize are all in the same company. So you know what? That is as nice as I can be to Hasbro. First of all, Hasbro, if you're watching, which they're not, come on, let's be real, but if you're watching and if you are a Hasbro who is involved with actually making GI Joe, thank you, I think you've done a great job. I mean, we got a retro gung-ho here that I really hope will get to breathe for the first time after being trapped in the plastic. Thank you for that. And I sincerely hope that the company that you work for is able to turn it around because if they don't, ultimately what that means is we will get less of what we want. We will get less variety. We'll just gonna get less of everything. So honestly, I don't care if Hasbro makes money, except to the extent that the making money gets us more and better product. So there you go. I said something sort of nice about part of Hasbro. You know what I've always wondered? I've always wondered if the GI Joe brand team at Hasbro really despises what I do here. They've seen it and they just can't stand my face, my voice and don't like anything that I do. And that's possible. It's entirely possible. I think it's too bad. I've only tried to be fair. I've only tried to be fair. I don't think that I've been excessively harsh when I've liked something I've said so. So, you know, I hope that at least those people don't hate me. But I've got to continue to try to be fair regardless. I did last year get that promo box from Hasbro. Anybody remember that? The promo box that they sent out to some people, some YouTube people. And that was nice. It was nice to be included in that. But I mean, I don't think that's something that I could do again. Now, I would, you know, I, if there were an opportunity that I could interview Emily or Lenny or anyone else involved in a meaningful way and in a fair way, I think I would enjoy that. If I could do an interview where I could get a few questions answered that I've been very curious about. But I don't think I can take free stuff anymore. I don't have any problem remaining objective and frank and honest, even if I get free product. But I just, I'm still less than comfortable with the perceived conflict of interest if I do. So, yeah, just, I just don't think I can do that anymore. Now, I say that, but I was sent some free product by somebody else, somebody not Hasbro. I will still be, you know, fair and objective. But this is stuff that, well, I've already seen it. So I kind of already know that it's awesome. But we will, we will be looking at something really cool. But, but not a Hasbro thing. So, so there we go. Merry frickin Christmas. I was as nice to Hasbro as I possibly could be. So anyway, all right, good news. I'm done. I'm off of the soapbox. I can reengage my eyeballs and try to read, try to read the chat. Oh, hello, Jeff. Thank you for being here. Hello, the Lilith. Hello, Bader Ray Bob. Hello, Dr. No Good. We've got a good group in the chat. Thank you guys for being here.  Is it maybe it's just because I'm old. That maybe I'm just too old fashioned that like, it feels very, I don't know, dismissive to call all of the actual people. Oh, this side. This side. I'll call the actual people that are in the chat. Chat. So anyway, hi chat. How you doing? Thoughts on cobra claws are coming to town. So a cobra claws are coming to town. In that episode, cobra shrink. Shrank their vehicles to toy size, which, which was a bit of a meta joke. But I know that there's been people talk about that before who has have said, if cobra had the technology to shrink their vehicles, that technology would be so valuable. If they just marketed that and sold that, they wouldn't need to take over the world. They would have all the money. But see that this is like over commander. He doesn't care about the money. He cares about what I think is he cares about his schemes. He's so convinced that his schemes will work, right? Because he thinks he's a smart guy. So he's convinced his schemes will work. I think the prospect of his schemes working is more attractive to Cobra Commander than the money or maybe even the power, right? So, yeah. So he'll forego the potential fortune that he could make with shrinking technology. And, and instead use that technology to try to attack one military base in the United States and in his, his bid to take over the world. That's what I think about it. So hello, hello, Sean Beckett. Hello, everybody else who came in. So this Sean Beckett mentioned a Super 7 O-ring. I did have a discussion about the Super 7 O-ring with Peg Warmers. I don't have any special information or insight on that. Super 7 has been pretty good about giving, giving us some characters in the five point of articulation in the reaction line that, that are a little bit obscure. But I think you're right in that we can't be too obscure or else people just won't, there won't be enough people that know what it is to, to sell enough product to make it worth it. On the other hand, although I think it's totally understandable and maybe even wise to, to do, you know, to play the hits, right? To, to do a Snake Eyes, to do a Duke and a Cobra Commander. I think that's reasonable, but I sincerely hope they get a bit deeper in the roster than that. So knock on, knock on what I really hope Super 7 is thoughtful about which figures it does in the O-ring line. Not Super 7. I mean, well, everything's been hit and miss.  The mothership, you know, it didn't fund the crowd funding did not succeed. But it's still a really unique idea. That's still something that I don't think anybody else has thought of doing. And that's the kind of creativity that I hope they bring to the O-ring line. Be creative, but you know, we want to be successful too. So, you know, another thing they were talking about is maybe keeping the price point for O-ring at about the $20 range, which is more than I would like to pay for O-ring, but it's close to what Hasbro was doing O-ring figures for. Because remember Hasbro is doing O-ring figures in two packs. And I feel like that was around $40, $44, something like that. So if Super 7 is able to keep GI Joe O-ring figures in the $20 range, to me, I think that means they they negotiate at a really sweet deal. A really sweet licensing agreement if they can do that. Oh, hello, Diane Davis. Thank you very much for the compliment. So the chat is welcome to take bets on whether or not I will be jabbed in the eye with a metal hook. There's a non-zero chance that it could happen. But nice to see you, Diane Davis. Diane and Davis are, I think, the world's foremost Duke expert and fan. I hope Super 7 gives you a good Duke.  I just would like it to be a good one. How about a reimagining of that version one Duke uniform, but not using the same parts that have always been used, when they revisit that O-ring Duke, it's like almost, not always, not always, but almost always the same parts. Well, okay, that's an iconic look for Duke. If you do a different Duke, then people may not recognize it as Duke. That looks like Duke. Well, okay, okay. But maybe with some new parts, you know, maybe some, you know, more detailed sculpting. That would be awesome. Hey, I might consider buying. I haven't been like 100% on board with buying the Super 7 O-rings.  If you're going to do a Snake Eyes, do a Snake Eyes, do like a version three Snake Eyes, or if you're going to do a version one or version two Snake Eyes, do one that has some detail that we haven't seen before, freshen it up, freshen it up. And I will add, I will add, Mary Ann is correct. It's chances low, but not zero. So you work out the probabilities. What was I saying? Oh yeah. So early in the classified line, first of all, I wasn't on board with classified right away anyway. I really bought the first wave of classified figures because, you know, I'm a G.I. Joe fan and I wanted to check them out. I ended up liking them a lot. But some fans were complaining. They didn't want the reimagined uniforms, the updated uniforms. They wanted the classic look. And ever since then, for the most part, they've given us just the classic look. They've translated, you know, one version or another of the three and three quarter inch figure into six inch, well here, well, this is supposed to be retro, right? So of course this is a retro, a retro gun hoe. So, but personally, I liked the update. I liked the refresh. All right. I really liked the refresh. I liked a little bit more color and do uniform.  Apparently I'm in the minority, but I really didn't mind scarlets in the uniform. I think it could have been updated a bit more and maybe in some different ways, but I liked the direction that it was going. As it is, the classified line is still giving us a lot of really high quality figures. Even though they are mostly just sizing up the three and three quarter inch figure, you have the almost universally the classic look on some of the 82 figures, like the 1982 characters, like Breaker and Grunt and Rock and Roll. Because those 1982 figures were so plain, they've had to freshen them up. And for the most part, I've really liked that. So Breaker is still green, right? But he has a tactical jacket, right? He has a flat jacket. He has an updated helmet and everything. So it's not just a six inch version of the 1982 figure with Rock and Roll. They gave them a lighter shirt. They gave them some tattoos. They gave them some different gear, but they still had the bullets and all of that. So you can still tell it was Rock and Roll. But I really liked the refresh on that. That may be one reason why I will try to consistently buy the classified version of 1982 characters because they are refreshed usually. So we're going to get a clutch with the vamp in the not too distant future. So I've already ordered that. So I'll get that whenever it ships. But yeah, the refresh of the 82 characters I've really liked. The classified is at the six inch scale. You can do a lot more with detail at the six inch scale. You can put a lot more than you ever could at three and three quarter inch or four inch. So I mean, you don't want to make the designs too busy, right? You don't want to clutter the design. But I would like to see them take advantage of that larger scale to give us the kind of detail that we never could have got before. So maybe in future waves, you know, maybe after we've gotten a lot of the top and second tier characters, maybe then we will get some refresh of the look on those other figures. Anyway, so, oh, hey, there's Kujo. Hello, Kujo. Hey, there's Bart. Well, look at this. Gains on. Hello, Bart. Hello, Kujo. This is what happens when I start, when I start pontificating, right? When I start, when I, when I start speechifying, when I start speechifying, I lose the ability to read. Look, my, my brain only has so much capacity, right? I only got so much going on up here. It's just, just one hamster on a wheel, right? So I can only do so much. I can only do so much. If I'm speechifying, I, I lose the ability to read and I may not remember my own name. But, but now, now, now I'm back, re-engaged the hamster to the chat. So hello, Raisiner. Nice to see you. Thank you very much for being here. Hello, Vitris. Sounds like a book title. Hello, Nicholas. Thanks, everyone. You know what? Damn it all. I, I am, I am more in the Christmas spirit. I wouldn't say I'm totally in the Christmas spirit, but I am definitely closer to the Christmas spirit than I was before I started. But don't forget, I'm going to be on what's on JoeMind right after this. The link's in the description. Maybe they can bring me down, right? Maybe they can bring me back to Earth. Usually they're, you know, they're pretty positive folks, but maybe, I don't know, maybe they can bring me back to Earth and make me stop believing in Santa Claus again. Well, we'll see. We'll try. You guys do your best. I'm almost in the Christmas spirit. Where is spirit? Oh, spirit's up there. I see if I had thought about it, I, if I'd thought about it, I would have gotten the spirit action figure and put, like, put all this stuff on spirit. Then I would have the Christmas spirit. I wouldn't be in the Christmas spirit. That action figure's too small, but I could still have the Christmas spirit, you know? Maybe that's what I've done wrong. That's what I'm done wrong. I've just adorned myself with the trappings of Christmas rather than actually have the Christmas spirit. Let's see. What's on your mind? Oh, hello, Dustin. I keep missing. What's on your mind says we're all drunk. That's, that's, you know what? It's Tuesday night. That's, that's late enough in the week. You know, that's late enough in the week. It's, it's fine. I don't perceive that as a problem. So, oh yeah, the gung-ho. Yeah, I was going to, I wanted to get through all my topics. Then we could try to open the gung-ho, you know, for, for, for Christmas to give this guy a break. So, yeah, it's, well, I'm, I'm, well, I've still got a little bit of time. I still have some hope for gung-ho. We'll, we'll see about it. Oh, is Rob Vegas here? Hello, Rob Vegas. How do you do? I didn't see you sneaking here. How, how do you do, sir? Nice to see you. I hope I've said hello. Hello, Papa Fett. Nice to see you as well. Oh, Papa Fett says it would be nice to see an o-ring cold slither. Okay. So this is why you got to make it to the GI Joe conventions, right? Because the writer of the cold slither episode was at assembly required in Des Moines this year. And now is engaged with the fan community and is actually on some of the, on some of the groups and stuff. So, so yeah, that would very much support an o-ring cold slither. That would be really cool. Oh, good night, Mr. Mad Super, Supernova. Thank you very much for being here. Anyway, you know, actually, not only did I not have notes, I don't have water for when my throat inevitably dies out as I'm talking so much. Also, like, who, who here thinks I look ridiculous? I'm, I'm, frankly, this seemed like a good idea at the time. Comic Trope says, will I cosplay for Joe Fess's year? I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. If I do it, I got to put together something really special. I got to put together something really special. Marianne says I look festive. You know who looks festive? Marianne looks festive. At least last time I saw her. She looked festive. Marianne's very festive person. In fact, I can confirm, can confirm, Marianne does have a Christmas tree on display, which I do not. So, Merry Christmas. Thank you, White Vegeta, for the Super Chat. Did you see the Ramen Toy 112 Bridge Layer Wolverine Tank? How much? I did not. Thank you for alerting me to that. I've been, well, I work all the time. I work all the, all the time. So, I do sometimes miss some of the GI Joe news, but thank you for turning that on. To be on to that, I will check it out. Let's see. Matt Subonova says, Super 73 and 3, 3.75 has to be different from, then Vintage, Vintage will lose value. I don't, I haven't seen any evidence that doing like retro figures or whatever causes Vintage figures to lose value, they still, they're still going up. But my main concern is, I still do want them to be different from Vintage because I don't want there to be any confusion among collectors about what's Vintage and what is, is not. Diana Davis says, I hope, I'm hoping to get to Joe Fest yet. I'm a tad worried. I understand. I understand.  We'll see if like there's any way we can help. If there's any way to help, you know, I think that you would have a really good time. And I think like, I just think that you would fit in there. I mean, Diana Davis has been a member of this fan community for longer than I have. So it would be fantastic to see you. Anyway, what was I, oh yeah, the question before the panel was, do I look ridiculous in this? Cause I think, I think I should, frankly, I should, I think I should take it off. Although, you know, the lights are, the lights are warm. The lights are, the lights are kind of cozy. It's like, it's like a, it's like a heating blanket.  It's like I got a great big electrical hug on. And that's making me feel festive as well. And Zaman says, would like to attend Joe Fest to meet the Sarge, both Joe fan and wrestling fan. The Sarge and Slaughter now makes it a regular thing to be at Joe Fest. That is always a highlight of the weekend because he is a really, really nice guy. He is so fun to meet and to talk to. If you have a chance to do it by all means, that's worth it. That is worth it. Meeting, sometimes meeting a celebrity, not worth it. Meeting Sarge and Slaughter, definitely worth it. I had a blast last year. Absolutely loved it. Hello, Rob. Hurry up. Mama's family is almost over. You're, I know, I know. I'll wrap it up. It looks like I got, what, 10 minutes? Looks like I got 10 minutes. And then somebody, I assume somebody will send me a, oh, the link has been sent and received. So I will, as soon as I'm done here, I will, I'll run. I'll run all the way to the Watson-Joe Mines studios. Oh, let's see. Kobo Cobb says, 100th viewer, thank you for being the 100th viewer. Thank you for setting us over the century mark. And you know what? You know what? I'm overcome. Because Kobo Cobb was the 100th viewer, I am overcome with Christmas joy, with cheer and goodwill toward men, right? And women and everything in between, really just goodwill toward people, even representations of people. I feel so overwhelmingly joyful and Christmassy that I have a very gung-ho Christmas. Gung-ho, what do you have to say about it? He doesn't speak English real good. He's kind of from the backwoods. But what he's saying is, Merry Christmas. And thank God I'm out of the thing. Thank you for letting me out of that box. So, like, this is what happens.  Let me get his hat. I hear the pleas and the cries of the less fortunate action figure that has had to live in a plastic coffin for all of this time, waiting for me to have time to just open it, just open me for Christ's sake. But you know what? I give credit to you guys. You hit me with that Christmas spirit. You hit me with that warmth and junk. And look what it did. This is what the Christmas spirit gets you. Devalued action figures. Devalued. Taken out of the plastic. You know, this is why... Look at this. Look at the destruction that Christmas has caused. That's why I say humbug. Humbuggery, this is. Right, Gun Ho? See, he agrees with me. Now he realizes that once he's out of the box, he ages and grows old and eventually will die like the rest of us. So congratulations, chat, on ruining Christmas for Gun Ho. Now I'm overcome. Now I'm just overwhelmed. Christmas spirit is totally gone. I don't even need the guys at What's On Joe Mine to bring me down.  You know what I need from the What's On Joe Mine guys? I need a Christmas goose. I need my Christmas spirit goose. So hopefully, hopefully What's On Joe Mine can do that. It looks like there's five minutes left, but I do want to leave... I do want to leave a few minutes early so that I can get some water to drink during the next show because I do want to be a good guest to the hosts and stuff. So I guess I'll start to wrap it up. It's getting close to an hour. It's getting close to an hour. Thank you everyone for being here. I really do feel better. That's not a joke. I do always feel better after these live shows. Just having this interaction with you and it just makes me feel better. It puts me in a better mood. So how many people can say that they go to the internet to be put in a better mood? So I think I'm pretty lucky. I think I'm very lucky to have this particular group here with me. So thank you everyone. Thank you for the wonton destruction and the Christmas cheer and all that. Thank you everyone. But I guess it's time to wrap it up so that I can race over to the Watson-Joe-Miner studio. I should be here the day after Christmas at least for the time being I can't think of any reason why I wouldn't be live next Tuesday if anything comes up. It's the holidays. If anything comes up I'll post and I'll let everybody know but at least for the time being I'm pretty sure I will be live next Tuesday. New Year's Eve however I know that I usually well not usually sometimes do a New Year's Eve show but I may have plans for New Year's Eve but in the meantime thanks everybody for watching check out the links in the description. I will see you on Watson-Joe-Miner in two minutes. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays everyone and I will see you next time. See ya. Bye everybody. Bye.


In this module, I'll talk about the rad variables, the operators, the types of operators and this is with reference to PHP because the web programming language we'll be using in this course is PHP and with reference to PHP why we are using PHP and how it compares with other environments that I have discussed in the previous module. So PHP is very popular and it doesn't cost a lot of money to host it and it is available and it is not you don't have to pay a very high license fee. So now we go into the nitty gritty details starting with the nitty gritty details about the PHP, how you declare the variables, how you name the variables and what are the types associated with a variable, what is meant by loose types and how you check the types and how you assign the types and how you fix the types of variables and I will also talk about the operators because it's not very interesting if I just have the variables and I load values in the variables and I perform unless I perform interesting operations on the variables it is not very exciting and then finally towards the end of this module I will talk about the precedence of the operators because this application has to understand that if I write an expression with the operators what should be the precedence, what should be the order, what should be the priority, what should be the sequence in which the operators have to be executed so as to get the correct result because at the end of the day it is the correct result, your boss may forgive you for a slow application, your boss may look aside if the application is not giving the desired level of performance but the answer should never be wrong, answer has to be correct 100% of the time all of the time. So what is a variable, a variable is like a container it is called a variable because the contents of that container can change, can vary so it's a variable and the naming convention of PHP is that you put a dollar sign and then you write the variable name and whenever the PHP encounters the variable it understands it is a variable it declares the variable I can create the variables and then is the type of the variable. Now there is a concept which is called as the loose type for PHP, the loose type means that the type of data associated with that variable is not fixed unlike Java where if you declare an integer variable it remains the integer variable but for PHP I declare the integer variable assign an integer value to it and then I add a real value to it it becomes a real variable and then I concatenate with a string to create a longer string it becomes a string variable and of course this not chaos then I can test the type of the variable there are commands which are like get type and then I can change the type of the variable by set type and then by typecasting I can also work with the types of the variable so there is a lot of flexibility over here then look at the commands for testing the type of the variable as you can see over here I can check if it's integer type I can check if it is Boolean type and I can also check that what is the type and application of that variable so then are the operators as I said before that having the operator makes the thing actually work for you so we have these comparison operators error control operators incrementing and decrementing operators these operators are there in the loops and then we have the logical apparatus operators we have the string operators and we have the area operators and the list goes on so we have all those operators and of course we have also functions in PHP which can do a lot of things and there are about 30 or so functions in PHP and of course I will discuss those functions as we come towards the details now this is the list of different operators and they are listing in terms of the precedence precedence means that which operator will work at which priority I give you one example for example if I have 2 plus 3 into 5 2 plus 3 into 5 like it what does it means does it means that 2 plus 3 is 5 into 5 25 or it means 2 plus 3 into 5 which is 15 plus 2 that is 17 so from this table we can see the precedence of the multiplication is higher than the precedence of addition so the correct answer would be the one which in which the multiplication takes place first which is followed by the addition so this is the precedence and of course we will discuss more about it and discuss the details with you