Data Pipeline
"Is the pipeline literally running from your laptop?" "Don't be silly, my laptop disconnects far too often to host a service we rely on. It's running on my phone."
"Is the pipeline literally running from your laptop?" "Don't be silly, my laptop disconnects far too often to host a service we rely on. It's running on my phone."
In the first panel Cueball shows Ponytail and White Hat a Data Pipeline he has constructed that, as he puts it, 'collects and processes all the data we need'. This implies that the three are running some sort of project that requires data processing. Ponytail assumes that this data pipeline is an unstable mess of scripts that will cease to function correctly should any unexpected input be received. Cueball tries to claim it isn't, but his hesitation (including using the word "might") essentially states that this is very likely, although he seems to hope that it might not be. Ponytail then seems impressed and expresses this to him. She, however, gets interrupted by Cueball who tells her that the system just malfunctioned and collapsed. He, however, states that he can fix it, making it seem like this cycle of patching and collapsing could repeat infinitely, or until all problems have been patched. Knowing Cueball's code, though, it seems more likely he can't patch it.
In the title text, Ponytail or White Hat proceeds to question how such an important system can run on such a small computer. However, Cueball makes it worse by saying he uses his phone due to the better connection. While this might give the pipeline more uptime, it also means its system resources are far more limited.
Cueball's hesitant response in this comic has some similarities to 410: Math Paper.