2499: Abandonment Function

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Abandonment Function
Remember to only adopt domesticated drones that specifically request it. It's illegal to collect wild ones under the Migratory Drone Treaty Act.
Title text: Remember to only adopt domesticated drones that specifically request it. It's illegal to collect wild ones under the Migratory Drone Treaty Act.

Explanation

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If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.
Pet abandonment is a situation of concern among biological pets, and is part of the reason there are animal rescue organisations providing for adoption in most regions. Since drones are automated, they can be programmed to have an automatic abandonment function.

With the drone responsible for finding its own new owner, one can imagine it becoming more and more fervent as its charge runs down, to prevent the accumulation of derelict drones in the streets.

Triggering abandonment based on extended close proximity to the device's own controller could produce issues such as accidental activition, or malicious activation by a party who could send the proximity signal from a great distance, possibly to many drones at once, via software defined radio.

Transcript

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Discussion

Don't know much about drones (I don't make, use, or program them) but I do believe the higher end models have a function where if they lose signal for a time they 'abandon' their current directed flight and either attempt a return (reverse vector) or landing (descent); i.e. the exact opposite of what the comic describes. someone with more familiarity with drones could probably tell you what that signal loss protocol is called but my guess it's either based on the word abandon, or it's esxact opposite (return?) 162.158.107.201 22:23, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Yep, that's definitely what it's referring to. They drone will register that it hasn't had a signal in X amount of time, and have a programmed response to that lack of signal. This is called an Abandonment Function and differs from drone to drone, but the basic idea is to prevent the drone just flying in a straight line until it runs out of charge. [[Special:Contributions/172--198.41.238.108 05:53, 9 August 2021 (UTC).70.122.74|172.70.122.74]] 07:02, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
It sounds like another interpretation of the comic is that Randall has found a way of preventing this real function from activating. Baffo32 (talk) 09:33, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

The Migratory Drone Treaty Act is presumably a reference to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which makes it a federal crime to take birds or bird parts, including feathers, or to kill birds without special permission from the Secretary of the Interior. The MBTA also prohibits any person from using bait to take migratory birds, or for someone to hunt in areas they know or reasonably should know are baited. 141.101.104.52 22:11, 7 August 2021 (UTC) dww (This comment initially added to the main page. Moved into here by someone just trying to help, hopefully not making it messy.)

Just in case a direct reference for the MBTA is needed, it can be found under 16 U.S. Code § 703 and 50 CFR § 10.14. 172.69.69.223 01:25, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Tomorrow (Mon 09 Aug 2021, or Tue 10 in my time zone) will be the 2500th comic! --198.41.238.108 05:53, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Manual adding.

I think someone's uploaded the _2x image, etc, rather than following the emergency instructions. I can't correct that bit myself, as I am now, so I'll prompt someone who can instead. 162.158.158.212 22:55, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

 What else needs to happen when a new page is made?
 I'm on mobile so editing is pretty hard [citation needed] but I started it!
 Does anyone have editing privileges to add a link to dgbrt's bot to maybe the bottom of the discussion template, or anywhere people will see repeatedly, so everybody learns how to make new pages when needed?

(The above few lines courtesy of User:Baffo32 - extracted from the broken Incomplete tag when it was somewhat fixed.)

Seems to me that Randall has begun displaying the x2 image on the front and if so then that is the picture we should use as well. The name of the file is not important, the important part is that we use the version displayed on xkcd. So I do not think we should change this. But anoying the Bot failed! --Kynde (talk) 10:32, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
The coding of the site is the same as it has been since the x2 pics started. It shows the x2 version when your browser zoom or DPI is high enough. On Chrome, I get the x2 version if I zoom in to 125% or higher. I personally think it would be better if this site used the x2 versions, as they look pretty much the same at 100%, but look better at higher DPI or zoom settings. Trlkly (talk) 21:23, 10 August 2021 (UTC)