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Shaking Up the Diamond Industry

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Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry

#61

Post by Ericson2314 »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #32
galangalalgol wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Synthetic diamond will eventually become so easy the industry won't be able to supress it anymore. The collapse will be interesting, in the bloddy sense of the term I suspect.

Synthetic diamonds are not easy to produce and they take time and energy (literally). The only reason synthetics are made is because the price of real diamonds help prop up the price of artificial ones. If the market collapses, as you predict, than artificial diamonds don’t become economical to create any more. My prediction: new mines will continue to be found and real diamonds will have the same market hold they ha…

That doesn't make much sense. The ratio of the mining cost manufacturing cost is the same regardless of the demand.

Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry

#62

Post by vasco »

saidajigumi wrote: post #57
brandnewlow wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t speak to finance but I get confused when people bash advertising in broad strokes. People running businesses need ways to exchange money for new customers. That’s advertising. Making that more efficient might surely be annoying but a complete waste of time?

I think you have a vast disconnect between the reality of advertising today vs. the quaint mid-20th century mental model that you seem to hold. Or you're being entirely disingenuous about what people complaining about "advertising" mean . If modern advertising 1) did not vacuum up personal data in extremely invasive ways, 2) didn't distort the entire business models of the largest tech companies against the interests…

Not taking sides but what you described were the natural developments of "making advertisement more efficient", people found that by showing targeted ads they'd have to show less of them to get the same amount of new customers, therefore making advertisement cheaper and more efficient. If this is a net positive or negative for society is something I'll stay out of.

Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry

#63

Post by hansvm »

brandnewlow wrote: post #48
andrepd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The actual work felt like it provided no real value to society A sign of a broken system that needs urgent repair. Most financial jobs, hft, adtech jobs... We have our best minds working on things that do not provide any useful value to society. This is not a good state of affairs.

I can’t speak to finance but I get confused when people bash advertising in broad strokes. People running businesses need ways to exchange money for new customers. That’s advertising. Making that more efficient might surely be annoying but a complete waste of time?

I think the parent comment was referring to adtech in particular, which I agree isn't inherently bad, but which currently has a model of: 1. Slurp up as much data as possible no matter how sensitive and no matter the societal cost. 2. Use that data purely to increase the efficiency of wasting an enormous chunk of the world's bandwidth and computing resources (anecdotally, something like 30% of my traffic before I started blocking everything at a dns level) _pushing_ ads to anyone who might match by any means necessary whether they want them or not.

I might even acquiesce to some form of push-based ads being broadly beneficial (e.g. for truly novel offerings), but for almost everything that currently shows up as an ad I would much rather be able to efficiently search for it and find it once I'm actually ready to buy than to be inundated with hundreds or thousands of worthless ads ahead of time in the off chance that they'll bring a particular product to the forefront of my mind and sway my purchasing decisions.

That's kind of the point of frameworks like async/await :) Adtech is using a polling system to try and demand my attention with a, let's say, 1% success rate, but we could cut down the noise 100x simply by awaiting my next purchasing decision.

Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry

#64

Post by turing_incomp »

jseliger wrote: post #60
lordnacho wrote: post #4

I still wish I'd discovered Moissanite before I got married. The rock would have been multiples larger and I'd have the satisfaction of not contributing to a monopolistic and exploitative industry.

There has been more noise around lab-grown diamonds as of late: https://qz.com/630512/would-you-propose-with-a-diamond-grown... .

A pricing comparison based on real data: https://blog.onetruerock.com/blog/LabvsEarth

The site was previously on ShowHN. I was in the process of looking a few months ago and found the overview of how the market works interesting: https://blog.onetruerock.com/blog/OneTrueRockValue

Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry

#65

Post by joering2 »

elcomet wrote: post #44
CrazyStat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also went with moissanite. My wife (then girlfriend) was in the "2-3 months salary for a diamond" camp which I find incredibly crass. Saved $15k on the diamond by going with moissanite and spent a fraction of that on getting a nice custom ring + wedding band made by an independent local jeweler instead. I was happy to support a local craftsman rather than DeBeers & co.

Did you tell her about the nature of the stone ? That sounds like a disaster to come if she doesn't know, and she learns it by going to the jeweler to clean / repair the stone.

Can you elaborate? You mean the fact all are synthethic (for hewlery purpose) or something else?

Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry

#66

Post by pottertheotter »

mysterydip wrote: post #36
irishcoffee wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was fortunate enough to discover moissanite. Wife loves it, and the price was somewhere in the ballpark of 90-95% cheaper than an equivalent size diamond. The added benefit is, everyone thinks it’s a diamond and we haven’t yet felt the need to correct them...

First time I've heard of moissanite, unfortunately (7 years too late). Any recommendations on a place to shop for it?

It's been 4 years but I got my wife's ring from https://www.moissaniteco.com/ and we had a good experience.

Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry

#67

Post by rhizome »

vasco wrote: post #62
saidajigumi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a vast disconnect between the reality of advertising today vs. the quaint mid-20th century mental model that you seem to hold. Or you're being entirely disingenuous about what people complaining about "advertising" mean . If modern advertising 1) did not vacuum up personal data in extremely invasive ways, 2) didn't distort the entire business models of the largest tech companies against the interests…

Not taking sides but what you described were the natural developments of "making advertisement more efficient", people found that by showing targeted ads they'd have to show less of them to get the same amount of new customers, therefore making advertisement cheaper and more efficient. If this is a net positive or negative for society is something I'll stay out of.

Efficiency is overrated. It's an acceptable rationale for destruction and exploitation (the process demands it), but that acceptance doesn't make it a good thing overall.

>people found that by showing targeted ads they'd have to show less of them to get the same amount of new customers

I mean, did they really? Where can I read about these successes?

Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry

#68

Post by skrebbel »

vostok wrote: post #35
anonu wrote: post #17

Really cool history. Thanks for sharing this. I can imagine if you "know the truth" about the business you're in you might want to get out. I felt like that about certain financial jobs I've had in the past. The actual work felt like it provided no real value to society, but the intellectual challenges were what kept me there.

That's interesting. I actually feel quite differently about my own experience in finance. HFT is a great example mentioned by a sibling comment. You kind of need some number of traders out there to make sure that market prices are honest and fair. HFT has done a great job of reducing (a) the number of people involved in trading per dollar traded and (b) the amount of money made by traders per dollar traded.

I'm very far from the finance world so please correct me if I'm saying something stupid.

But how does eg an algorithm that sells stock when the newspaper headlines have a "negative sentiment" help ensure that "market prices are honest and fair"? What's "honest and fair" about stocks across the board dropping because of bushfires or a virus outbreak, only to rise back to pre-headline levels half a day later?

Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry

#69

Post by bonoboTP »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #8
demosito666 wrote: post #2

The right way to shake this industry would be to obliterate it completely. Finding another useless piece of glass and selling it for $$$ is not shaking anything.

Society would have to work to convince people that status symbols are not worth pursuing. Unfortunately, based on my experience of how people’s brains work, that is quite an uphill battle.

While status symbols exist everywhere, this specific obsessing over diamond rings and being "shamed" if you don't get one is pretty US-specific. In Hungary, for example, many couples just get simple, golden rings without any gemstone. A wedding ring traditionally isn't supposed to be flashy here.

Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry

#70

Post by amylene »

skrebbel wrote: post #68
vostok wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. I actually feel quite differently about my own experience in finance. HFT is a great example mentioned by a sibling comment. You kind of need some number of traders out there to make sure that market prices are honest and fair. HFT has done a great job of reducing (a) the number of people involved in trading per dollar traded and (b) the amount of money made by traders per dollar traded.

I'm very far from the finance world so please correct me if I'm saying something stupid. But how does eg an algorithm that sells stock when the newspaper headlines have a "negative sentiment" help ensure that "market prices are honest and fair"? What's "honest and fair" about stocks across the board dropping because of bushfires or a virus outbreak, only to rise back to pre-headline levels half a day later?

The best way to make a correct prediction is to continually update your estimate as new information comes in. As it comes in. That’s all the markets are doing.

When the virus starts, the markets adjust downwards because there is a chance that virus kills tens of millions, which would have severe economic impact.

As the world public health starts to reduce the error bars or bad outcome likelihood, the market adjusts.

The problem is that you’re thinking of something as having a concrete value. Instead, think like Tetlock teaches in superforecasters. Then you will have a better model of what’s going on.

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