HP has an official reply on one of their blogs. I had twittered about it last week and they replied and pointed me to

http://www.thenextbench.com/t5/Voodoo-Blog/Customer-Feedback... and their follow up http://www.thenextbench.com/t5/Voodoo-Blog/A-Word-from-Desi-...

My guess is the people in the YouTube video didn't bother to calibrate the camera, as there is an HP guide somewhere in there showing off the plethora of settings.

Another question that I have not seen addressed is why is the video a mirror-image, If you notice the name tags in the video they are reversed.

Wasn't this an episode from "Better Off Ted"?

http://www.tv.com/better-off-ted/racial-sensitivity/episode/...

Let's not anthropomorphize technology, nor suggest that a technical issue with lighting is somehow an indicator of racism on the part of the developer.

I'm pretty sure the accusation of racism was tongue-in-cheek. It's obviously a technical problem, but still something that the developers should probably have thought about (did they do all their tests with light-skinned people?).

Either way, somewhere there's a lawyer licking his lips.

It's unclear exactly how common this problem is, and it would be nice to see some more in-depth independent investigation (I have some degree of skepticism about the YouTube video), but failing to test something like this with anyone who isn't white would suggest a issue at some level.

similarly, a camera that thinks asians are blinking: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jozjozjoz/3529106844/

When this was originally posted on HN here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005406 4 days ago I had a feeling the video would attract a lot of views. I glanced at the counter which read around 15,000. It now reads over 1,160,000. That's after 4 days. Regardless of the underlying issue, and in spite of my time in the tech space, I'm in awe of the speed and reach of information.

There's enough real racism in the world. We don't have to make up more to entertain ourselves do we?