That has to be one of the worst xkcd comics I've seen in a long time. The left picture shows a white and gold dress against a blue backdrop, and the right picture shows a blue and gold dress against a yellow backdrop. In neither picture does the "gold" look remotely like anything that could be called black.

I think a lot of this confusion is coming from the fact that the white balance of the picture is such that the blue fabric looks like evening light scattering off a white surface (a very light blue), so our eyes are interpreting that as the "white" point, and correcting everything else in the picture to match. So we have a way overexposed very dark object made to look like a slightly underexposed light object.

Why not? Honestly, why would a motivated enough studio not do such a thing? Remember the BMG rootkit fiasco. The only problem for them was that they were caught.

Does anyone else just want to sit down with the genius who decided to put a Java runtime into a standard for home video and have a long, fireside chat?

Possibly involving the poker and some of the larger blocks of firewood?

Just in case you weren't aware, the full text of that beatitude is:

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth".

That does not sound like a cautionary tale.

To quote Queeg:
Chess

Even with the backlight turned right down? I have never seen this happen to such a degree that makes a redshifter ineffective, though I don't own a Kindle so perhaps it's specific to those.

On desktops and laptops I use redshift-gtk. It sits in the background and gradually adjusts the gamma of your screen based on your longitude/latitude and the time of day. There is an icon in the system tray that you can click to manually turn it off to see the difference or if you briefly have a need to see colour-accurate content.

I don't recall what one I have used for Android, though I have used Nightfilter in the past that works well (though manual).

What are you doing about it?

If you say "nothing" then as a citizen you are a major part of the problem.

Anyone reading screens at night should already have an automatic redshifter installed, unless you explicitly need to stay awake for some reason. I use them for all my desktops, laptops and tablets.

The difference on your eyes is, pun intended, night and day.

Terrorist group wants to legitimize their snooping activities.

News at 11

I have seen far too much of that sentiment. That someone with right-of-way is entitled to plough through whatever hazards may be present and consequences be damned. I have sat in a car and actually hear the driver, after taking part in a near-miss event at an intersection, say that it's okay because they would win if it ever went to court.

Little consolation indeed, if you have to go carless for four weeks while it's being panelbeaten back into shape, or six months in hospital.

If this sort of mentality ever finds you, a good counter-principle is this:
You never have the right of way until everyone else gives it to you.

That is all.

Look, if you really want the alleged convenience of basic appliances connected to the Internet then you're playing tic-tac-toe with power-hungry governments and greedy companies.

The only way to win is to not play.

That might have been true a couple of years ago, but now that it's common knowledge that your device is probably spying on you, people are suddenly interested in how to make their devices NOT spy on them.