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| Drone Training |
 Title text: The joke will be on him in a few weeks when animal control shows up and takes custody of his Roomba. |
Explanation
|
This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: A simple comic, anything missing? |
In this comic, Black Hat enters a pet store run by White Hat. He wants to buy something to help him train his drone, which keeps flying into the wrong rooms. This is absurd as drones are not living creatures like dogs or cats, which can be trained to do tricks, or stay in the correct areas (inside his property). He also wants a shock collar for his Roomba, which would train it to stay inside or at least on his lawn.
Cat repeller are devices or substances for training cats or repelling them from furniture or other areas. The Wikipedia page lacks the spray but you easily can create it at home as shown here: Friendly (but Effective) Cat Repellent, Black Hat is probably wasting some money when he buys it in a shop.
Roomba is a branch of autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners and controlling it by electric shocks from a shock collar, normally used for dogs, is more than questionable. Those collars are legal in the US but they are banned in many European countries and others. A Roomba was previously mistaken for a dog in 1558: Vet.
Knowing Black Hat, he might be poking fun at people's assumptions that modern robots are more advanced than they actually are. It is also possible, however, that he just wants to terrify people with the idea of robot abuse/conditioning or even more that he genuinely believes he can force robots to obey him via inflicting suffering.
The title text may mean one of three things: The endeavor will become a total flop when the Roomba probably gets rid of the collar and terrorizes the neighborhood. As a result dogcatchers from the animal control service will arrest this "wild animal". Or animal control services will confiscate the Roomba to save it from its abusive owner. Or, at least, White Hat also owns a Roomba and it will be taken into custody because it has not been trained with a shock collar.
Transcript
- [Black Hat stands in front of a store counter facing White Hat who stands behind.]
- Black Hat: My drone keeps flying into the wrong rooms. Do you have anything to discourage it?
- White Hat: Sir, this is a pet store.
- Black Hat: Yeah, I was thinking one of those spray bottles for cats.
- White Hat: I don't think you can train a drone.
- [White Hat hands a spray bottle over the counter.]
- Black Hat: Eh, they say that about cats, too. Plus, these days they probably all come with deep learning or whatever. Drones, I mean. Maybe cats too.
- White Hat: Fine, here's a bottle.
- Black Hat: Do you sell a shock collar that can fit around a Roomba?
- White Hat: I'm going to have to ask you to leave.
Trivia
- This is the first comic since 1875: Computers vs Humans that does not involve the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse as subject matter.
- The only other comic where White Hat and Black Hat both appear and both talk is 1708: Dehydration, and even then they do not really talk to each other, just in the same setting.
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