(Photo: Business Insider)

Twitter attempted to have a conversation about race and the tech industry yesterday. The loudest voices?  White men on either side of the argument shouting each other down. What got obscured along the way was just how much pattern-matching plays into the lack of diversity in the tech industry and the people who cover it and how that holds all of us back.

They almost made Jamelle Bouie’s point for him.

In a feature for The Magazine, Mr. Bouie examined why the mastheads of tech blogs like The Next Web, The Verge, Engadget and Gizmodo were overwhelmingly white and male. Rather than “overt racism,” he found a prohibitive combination of dependence on unpaid internships--and the network effect of a wired boys club whose members sometimes seem to be talking solely for each other's benefit.

Technology has become just as pervasive as the Valley had always hoped, Mr. Bouie noted:

Gadgets are used by everyone. African Americans and Latinos, for example, are huge Internet users. They use Twitter and Facebook at higher rates than whites, they’re the most likely to use their cell phones for Internet usage, and the cell phones they buy are — for the most part — smartphones.

But so many of its gatekeepers are cut from the same cloth, limiting “aspects of their perspective.”

(For the purposes of his argument, Mr. Bouie focused on African-American and Latino writers: "In no way does this discount the real problems of access and representation for Asian Americans, but compared to African Americans and Latinos, they have much more representation in technology journalism." It's an important distinction. "Who Has It Worse," has to be the most divisive game ever marketed to minorities. But we all know there is a difference. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to themselves or doesn’t spend much time at tech events.)

I've never been discriminated against as a tech reporter because I’m Indian. At least I don't think I have. It's impossible to say, really, because there are a number of other factors that make me counter-to-type for a tech blogger. In addition to not being white, I’m not a dude and I didn't come from a family that had any interest in technology or media. It wasn't until I was 26 that a small J-school scholarship, student loans, and a semi-patient live-in boyfriend helped balance the cost of living in New York City with the limited income of a low-paying magazine internship.

The problem with identifying racism is that it seldom happens in isolation. Often it’s a confluence of factors that inspire people to see you as enough of an "other" to underestimate you, ignore you, deny you access, or simply not want to help.

Silicon Valley, however, does not respond well when its virtue is called into question. Unlike Wall Street, say, the tech industry cares what you think of it. It wants to be seen as a bootstrapped meritocracy--until the VC check arrives--open to all exceptional individuals and beholden to nothing but the disruptive tide of innovation ushered in by its gadgets, services and apps.

To imply otherwise is to call into question the hustle--the defensive posture of a “crush it” culture, which helps obscure both self-doubt and the fact that success can be capricious.

Mr. Bouie’s essay followed a similar line of reasoning to the one we've heard about the lack of black and Latino entrepreneurs and investors. ("I don't know a single black entrepreneur," Michael Arrington told CNN in 2011 before recanting his statement, claiming it caught him off guard.) Substitute "inability to find funding" for "unpaid internships," but the network effects and pattern-matching stays the same. Mark Zuckerberg becomes a billionaire and suddenly Ben Horowitz feels comfortable crowing that Andreessen Horowitz "likes to invest in college dropouts with insane ideas going after tiny markets with no way to monetize."

Another recent discussion, this one about sexism faced by women working in gaming, devolved into making fun of male tech writers somehow. Trust me, male tech reporters do not need any more attention. There is already an entire phalanx of marketing and PR professionals--by and large capable women--who make them feel special. That whole dance is about as gendered as a Budweiser commercial.

Still, why is there so much attention being paid to the people covering tech when the industry itself faces very real race and gender gaps? As Melissa Gira Grant recently wrote about girl geeks vs. boys kings, “the unpaid and underpaid labor of women is essential to making that machine go, to making it so irresistible.” Besides a touch of solipsism, it’s likely because the media has such entrenched discrimination problems of its own. It’s not just tech bloggers who are mostly white men. In 2006, The Observer looked at the magazine world’s vanilla ceiling. No one could believably argue that much has changed.

It’s a pity that the conversation around Mr. Bouie’s article degenerated into piling on his most easily dismissed detractor, Jason Calacanis. In the same breath that he invoked the emergence of post-race society, Mr. Calacanis assigned a percentage of Korean-ness to his daughter's face. Imagine being that child and then let's all move on.

Perhaps a better way to encourage more diversity in tech reporting is to look at why diversity is important. As Mr. Bouie noted, the homogeneity of voices has lead tech writers to sleep on Pinterest’s popularity with women and dismiss concerns about how App.net might lead to white flight because of the Twitter competitor’s $50 fee.

What’s more, the proliferation of apps, gadgets and services--coupled with the metastasization of the often complacent tech press--has amplified the noise-to-signal ratio.

A report last month claimed that of the 430,000 odd apps that will debut in the iOS App Store this year, most will go unnoticed. Gatekeepers can influence which products get attention and adoption, which in turn can affect funding.

Venture capital firms sometimes talk about pattern matching, the act of identifying traits of successful entrepreneurs and companies in order to replicate their wins. Even an industry that prides itself on innovating, it seems, actively seeks to propagate the status quo.

That might also be the reason why, when we read about how black people use Twitter, it's so rarely from their own perspective.

Thus far none of the posts related to this week’s controversy have shown up on Techmeme, so no points on the leaderboard for trying to talk about race. And the biggest beneficiary to all the ink spilled might be Marco Arment, the bomb-throwing developer behind The Magazine. Here’s hoping that changes.

A nest of emotional ninjas. (Photo: Flickr.com/lynxman

Many Mac owners have, at one point or another, found themselves forlornly waiting at the Genius Bar, on the verge of tears, desperate for someone to just fix the problem, as quickly and as cheaply as possible. An hour later, you walk out of the glass doors, wallet a couple hundred dollars lighter but spirits lifted because that dude in the blue shirt was just so understanding.

Well, he ought to be, because it sure sounds like Apple puts a lot of  work into turning new hires into emotional ninjas. Over the course of two weeks, they're transformed into psychological warriors--bent on extracting your cash from your wallet, using "empathy."

At least, that's what we're left to conclude from this Gizmodo expose of the super-secret training manuel for newly hired Geniuses. The highlights:

Geniuses have no stomach for your lousy HU-MON EMOTIONS.

 If someone walks in sobbing because their hard drive is fried, you'll receive no immediate consolation. "Do not apologize for the business [or] the technology," the manual commands. Instead, express regret that the person is expressing emotions. A little mind roundabout: "I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated," or "too bad about your soda-spill accident," the book suggests.

No using the terms "crash," "eliminate," or "bug." 

This is really just an advanced, Apple judo version of the customer is always right. But then there's the list of words that just straight up aren't allowed, on page 30. The manual explains that "AppleCare's legal counsel has defined [these] terms that should be avoided when discussing product issues with customers."

Are Apple Geniuses unusually good or unusually bad at poker? We can't decide. 

Page 45 of the manual might've been good cargo to send with a deep space probe, as it'd help anyone unfamiliar with our species understand "Emotion Portrayed through Nonverbal Gestures." Neatly broken into a "Positive" and "Negative" column and then again by categories, someone without any social calibration can easily learn that "blank stare" is a sign of "boredom," and "smiling" indicates "openness."

God help us if Apple ever decides to branch out into something really serious, like heroin or 32-ounce sodas.

Mr. Honan. (Photo: About.me)

The advent of the iPhone really upset the apple cart at Samsung. [All Things D]

Read Matt Honan's hacking horror story, then, in a flurry of panic, immediately change all your passwords. [Wired]

People are happier with their tablets than their smartphones. Anything that doesn't handle calls and therefore doesn't drop them is automatically endearing. [CNET]

Here's what the Mars Curiosity rover saw as it landed on Mars. [YouTube]

But for a a while you weren't able to see that, because someone issued a takedown notice, despite the fact NASA's footage is in the public domain. [Ars Technica]

(Photo: Brooke Hammerling, Instagram)

Last night, gangs of glammed-out New York techies and science enthusiasts trekked uptown to the Rose Center for Earth and Space to take in a stunningly optimistic program presented by Gizmodo and the American Museum of Natural History. The event was planned and hosted by Gawker Media founder Nick Denton (with the help of Brew PR), who appeared so eager about the "celebration of technology and discovery" that he tweeted about it numerous times prior to the event, published a grandiose blog post on Gizmodo reveling in the glorious achievements of science, and sent out an email to attendees: "This evening should be inspiring and fun," he wrote.

"I've never seen Nick so excited for a social event," one colleague remarked.

And who could begrudge Mr. Denton his excitement? The event was everything he claimed it would be--and perhaps more, depending on how many free cocktails you indulged in. Hosted by Ellen V. Futter, the president of the American Museum of Natural History, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley and Mr. Denton himself, the gathering was as swank and inspiring as expected.

Betabeat arrived to the First Comes the Dream event around 7:30 p.m. and immediately checked in on Foursquare, as tech reporters at Foursquare-branded events are wont to do. As residents of Brooklyn, we were happy to discover we'd unlocked the Far Far Away badge--"Welcome to the world above 59th street!" it exclaimed.

In the lobby of the Rose Center, we were checked in via an iPad by a lovely woman from Brew PR, who handed us a program and directed us to the Hayden Planetarium, where the night's first event would take place. The entry hallway to the Planetarium was packed with eager attendees swigging wine and snacking on cheese and grapes. We spotted Reddit general manager Erik Martin collecting drinks for fellow attendees at the bar and stopped to say hi. He escorted us over to his group, which included Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and Gawker head of ops Scott Kidder, who had just gotten back from a trip to Budapest.

"I'm a daily Betabeat reader," admitted Mr. Kidder. "But you guys should post more." (We're working on it--promise.)

Mr. Martin and Mr. Ohanian could only stay for the first half hour of the event, as they had to get to an Internet Defense League party–complete with a stories-sized projection–downtown.

Notable names gathered at the museum included Gilt Groupe founder and CEO Kevin Ryan, NY1 newspaper addict Pat Kiernan and his colleague Jamie Shupak with New York Times media nerd Brian Stelter, and AllThingsD honcho Kara Swisher, in town from San Francisco. We also spotted NASA administrator Charles Bolden Jr., father of RSS Dave Winer, Talking Points Memo deputy publisher Callie Schweitzer, and Business Insider startup reporter Alyson Shontell. A sci-fi themed string quartet scored the evening with Star Trek and Star Wars songs, while the crowd bantered and nursed their cocktails.

Soon we were ushered into the Hayden Planetarium, where we found a seat in front of Branch founder Josh Miller and his mentor, former Twitter VP of Product and current COO of the Obvious Corporation, Jason Goldman. Ms. Futter, AMNH's president, began her opening remarks as Scrollkit founder Cody Brown and New York Times media reporter David Carr snuck to their seats.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden Jr. said a few words before deputy mayor for economic development Robert K. Steel took the podium, lamenting the fact that Ms. Futter called the astronaut "cool" but not him. Soon, the lights began to dim and the crowd was treated to a stunning walkthrough of current NASA data displayed on the Planetarium's dome by ANMH's director of astrovisualization, the lion-maned Carter Emmart.

(Photo: American Museum of Natural History, Instagram)

We craned our necks back to take in the dizzying site: Data captured just yesterday danced across the screen as Mr. Emmart zoomed in and out. He took us to the international space station, and then out further to the moon, where he focused in on some craters before taking us out further still, to Mars. Next we were viewing our entire galaxy, and then out as far as possible so that the millions of galaxies scientists have documented twinkled like pinpoints of light on the vast darkness of the unknown. There was much oohing and aahing. When Mr. Emmart remarked that his time was up, one person in the audience actually yelped: "Awww!"

The presentation was easily one of the coolest things Betabeat had ever seen. We weren't the only ones. "I don't know what to do about how much I love space," tweeted New York Times reporter Jenna Wortham.

As the lights came back on, the crowd shuffled into elevators and down to the Cullman Hall of the Universe, where drinks and hors d'oeuvres were served and the string quartet cleared from the stage to make room for i09 editor in chief Annalee Newitz and renowned physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Mr. Tyson, who skipped a pre-screening of The Dark Knight Rises to attend, was arguably the biggest attraction of the night. At the mere mention of his name by Ms. Futter earlier, the crowd burst out into spontaneous applause. The director of the Hayden Planetarium since 2000, Mr. Tyson has risen to cult status in recent years, thanks to a combination of blatant genius and a wry brand of humor that lends him a personability untouched by most physicists. To the crowd of science geeks and Redditors on the Internet, Mr. Tyson is basically a god: memes have been carved in his name for years.

The energy in the room was palpable as Mr. Tyson took the stage and the crowd erupted into wild applause. Ms. Newitz proved a deft interviewer, easily matching Mr. Tyson's impressive wit. He spoke of his dream plans for NASA ("I want aliens to be proud of what we've done"), of why we need to rekindle our space-race era love for science, and how much he loves Star Trek. At one point, while answering a question about his ideal space program, he referenced a ship that could be outfitted with various "strap-ons." The audience giggled nervously. "That's... not the right word," he admitted, chuckling, before moving on, while patches of the audience muffled their guffaws.

Soon, program wranglers were giving Ms. Newitz the cue to wrap it up, and Mr. Tyson closed the session with remarks about how to get inspired about science again. Hungry and tired, we ducked out of the event and trotted to the exit, where we were handed a First Comes the Dream-branded moleskin and wished a pleasant evening.

All of this talk about space just made us want to go up to the stars. Luckily, we ran into the one person perhaps best enabled to allow us to reach our goal: tech investor (and former journalist) Esther Dyson. Ms. Dyson is on the board of XCor, a private corporation aiming to bring sub-orbital flight to the general public, or as general a public that can afford a $95,000 per-flight ticket. Ms. Dyson told us that she was recently trying out spacesuits for the company - she's planning to be on the last flight before the company opens it up to the masses. We eagerly asked when we could join in on the zero-gravity fun. "A few years," she told us, reassuring us that, while she would be getting a preview to the experience, she would be going up after they test it thoroughly: "When they get it right."

Though we typically bleed skepticism, we found ourselves uncharacteristically moved by the event as we crossed the park to catch a cab. The air was thick with summer, the musk of trees momentarily eclipsing the normal exhaust fumes that blanket the city. We felt filled with the vastness of space the way we always do after leaving the planetarium (we are embarrassingly regular guests there), aware again of the knowledge of just how tiny our lives, our planet, even our galaxy are.

"First comes the dream," we thought.

It was probably just the wine.

(Photo: flickr.com/nostri-imago)

In keeping with today's theme of aggregating news you can perhaps use if you have more money than common sense, we thought it worth pointing to Gizmodo's in-depth investigation of the dark Internet's hub for ordering weapons online.

Wares for sale at the aptly named Armory include everything from the humble Glock to the aforementioned AK-47, and yes, you will need to pay in Bitcoins. Guns are shipped in a series of small, discretely wrapped packages (just like vibrators!), which you then reassemble into your mail-order death machine.

The best part: Gizmodo called the ATF, as in, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. And they sounded, frankly, a little befuddled?

The ATF later called back to say they'd located The Armory in Virginia Beach, and that it was a fully licensed, legitimate operation. This, despite the fact that I'd explained again and again that it existed only within a marsh of online encryption, with the explicit mission of illegally selling illegal guns, illegally. I explained how a storefront in Virginia was sort of the opposite of The Armory, but it wasn't much good—the ATF said it'd have to dig around itself again and get back to me. It hasn't.

Getting to the site will require a little IT jujitsu, however, starting with the installation of the software program TOR, which "routes and reroutes your connection to the Internet through a sprawling maze of encrypted nodes around the world, making it a herculean feat to find out who's who."

So unless you're looking to stage an outright coup d'état, maybe just stick to gun shows for now.