Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

money.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 455 posts

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#61

Post by bumblebritches5 »

sersi wrote: post #36
seibelj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science. A good filter

I don't necessarily hate all GMO but I'm very dubious about GMO crops that are engineered to withstand Glyphosate better and I prefer not to eat such crops because they are more likely to have been treated with this herbicide.

THIS.

GMO's are generally fine, the problem is that basically all of the GMO's you find aren't engineered to repel pests themselves, they're just engineered to withstand pesticides, which encourages their use.

The problem with using even more pesticides is that obviously they could be on the surface of the food we eat, and who knows how hard they are to get off.

that's the best case scenario.

The worst case scenario, is that the pesticides are taken up by the plant itself, meaning it's composed of those pesticides, which you then consume, and they do who knows what...

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#62

Post by empthought »

sersi wrote: post #36
seibelj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science. A good filter

I don't necessarily hate all GMO but I'm very dubious about GMO crops that are engineered to withstand Glyphosate better and I prefer not to eat such crops because they are more likely to have been treated with this herbicide.

Why? Are you a dicotyledon that relies on the shikimic acid pathway to synthesize folates?

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#63

Post by martin1975 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #11

Interestingly enough, this starts to bring up questions that have previously only been super active in science fiction circles, particularly, Star Trek: If you can perfectly recreate something down to the molecular level, what actually has value? (Assuming, someday, that synthetic versions are excessively cheap, in Star Trek's case.) If you can replicate cooked food perfectly, will people still claim that "real" food…

A knock-off will always be a knock-off because it lacks the authenticity mark of its creator ... in the case of diamonds, it's time.

In the case of hackintoshes, it's Apple... Prada shoes, the seal of Mario Prada... etc.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#64

Post by bumblebritches5 »

mathgladiator wrote: post #34
seibelj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science. A good filter

Or that they understand science and don't want to be in the experimental group. They would rather be in the control.

Amen.

It's hilarious to me how most of those "hur dur ur anti science11111!!" people literally don't even understand anything about what they're talking about, the talking box just told them that they're ok so they parrot it back to feel smart.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#65

Post by ggg9990 »

fgonzag wrote: post #10

"Lightbox will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now" This is clearly a play to devalue the image of man made diamonds. "May not be forever" my ass, it's the exact same thing. Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made dia…

What if even below Moissanite? If they are selling artificial diamonds for $1 each that might be the best way to protect the mined diamond price.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#66

Post by kenning »

fgonzag wrote: post #10

"Lightbox will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now" This is clearly a play to devalue the image of man made diamonds. "May not be forever" my ass, it's the exact same thing. Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made dia…

Very reminiscient of the intentional devaluation of Crystal Pepsi by Tab Clear (see the second paragraph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_Clear#Post-discontinuation)

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#67

Post by KC8ZKF »

p1necone wrote: post #58
seibelj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science. A good filter

Lots of smart people have problems with Monsanto's business practices rather than GMO specifically.

Maybe we should have "Non-Monsanto" labels then, instead of "Non-GMO."

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#68

Post by madengr »

mrob wrote: post #50
gruez wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is great news for scientific research- diamonds for experimental purposes are a huge market that's impeded by their artificially high cost is this really the case? AFAIK industrial diamonds are quite cheap. if anything, debeers's meddling made industrial diamonds cheaper, because it suppressed the demand from the jewelry market.

Industrial diamonds are cheap if all you want is an abrasive, but diamonds also have very high thermal conductivity, very high index of refraction (without the birefringence of silicon carbide), and could potentially be useful as semiconductors. We need big and cheap single crystal diamonds to make full use of them. A strong market for synthetic gemstone diamonds could make that happen.

There was a an engineer several years ago developing a process to create large sheets of diamond. He claims to have received numerous death threats.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#69

Post by Karunamon »

vidarh wrote: post #41
digi_owl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to recall that Deep Space 9 touched in this in various ways during its run. Keep in mind that it was the first series that was fully made without Roddenberry input.

TNG, Voyager and Deep Space 9 all at various points made an issue of how the replicated food was not quite the same, without really trying to explain why (a lot of the issues with our mass produced food is exactly that: it's been modified to suit mass production, transport and storage, and often to be cost reduced as well; you'd expect most of those issues to disappear once you're using a replicator). But you're prob…

TNG touched on it I think - Deanna once tried to have the computer replicate her a chocolate sundae or some such, and it was implied if not outright said that the normal sundae was modified to be more nutritious. I’d imagine tweaking the “junk” out of desserts would make them taste different even if you have molecular control over the results.

Yup, found the clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBWpVjzJXIs&feature=youtu.be...

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#70

Post by Hermel »

What you are all not getting is that a diamond is not about its chemical properties, but about economic signalling. Just like artificial fur could not replace natural fur, man-made diamonds will never be the luxury item mined diamonds are today. Diamonds, just like gold, are not valuable because of their physical properties, but because they are rare. If someone invented a way to produce arbitrary amounts of gold at a low price, it would not make everyone rich, it would just lead to a collapse of the gold price (unless of course you can somehow distinguish it from the traditional gold, which is what De Beers is trying to ensure for diamonds).
Post reply on HN