I currently live in Sierra Leone working as a software dev, and just came back from an evening jog around the largest diamond mine in West Africa. It's crazy how much pain an misery diamonds have caused to this country. The citizens here in Koidu don't get any of the income of the diamonds, and live it extreme poverty... Meanwhile the guys from De Beers are living bougie lives in their maximum security compounds, with a pool, western supermarket and bar.
Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
81–90 of 130 posts
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is extremely difficult to create large, colorless, flawless synthetic diamonds. Currently synthetics are primarily used for industrial applications like drill bits.
"synthetic" diamonds with far fewer impurities are far cheaper than "natural" diamonds of the same size. The goalpost will always move because the things used to justify it are excuses and not real reasons.
Even De Beers announced they would start selling synthetics.
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#83Now do one about all the really poor diamond hunters, you fag
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#84Earlier 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?
The parent said adtech, not advertising. What we call adtech today is advertising plus tracking. The tracking part is what most people seem to have a problem with.
Post-war advertising isn't much better itself, being based to make people to want things they might not even need...
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#85I currently live in Sierra Leone working as a software dev, and just came back from an evening jog around the largest diamond mine in West Africa. It's crazy how much pain an misery diamonds have caused to this country. The citizens here in Koidu don't get any of the income of the diamonds, and live it extreme poverty... Meanwhile the guys from De Beers are living bougie lives in their maximum security compounds, wit…
> The citizens here in Koidu don't get any of the income of the diamonds.
Surely the issue of where and how minimg licences and sales revenue is distributed in SL, is something the folk of Koidu should take up with their government.
As with any company anyehere, De Beers pays the share they are obliged to to the authorities.
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#86Earlier 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 better in all objective criteria that "natural" diamonds. Before they were a thing they would even be considered top quality diamonds. Once they were mass produced the criteria changed and now the "natural" with higher degree of impurities (a previously undesirable trait) are considered better. It's not about the rock. The rock is a placeholder. It's about how much you spent on the rock (comm…
Yeah, one of my physics teachers did a job for a diamond company where the goal was to ADD impurities to a diamond, because diamonds with (the right?) impurities are colored, more rare (?), and fetch a higher price.
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#87Folks who enjoyed this article may also be interested in this one [0] from The Atlantic, published in 1982, which chronicles the rise of the diamond industry during the 20th century. [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...
Discussed 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818618
2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535611
2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1405698
Also 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1110283
Those are the big threads. Lots of little ones too: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
The author showed up here once: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5414757
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#88Earlier 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 rubies and sapphires have been around for over 100 years and are dirt cheap ($10 for a 15mm one on eBay). However, the market for natural rubies and sapphires is still going strong. A high quality natural Ruby costs about the same as a similar sized diamond. There's no reason to believe the diamond industry is going to crash any time soon.
> Synthetic rubies and sapphires have been around for over 100 years and are dirt cheap ($10 for a 15mm one on eBay).
Rubies are much cheaper than that.
At least, I used to order them from Pehnec Gems at prices more like $3 per (in lots of 10+). I haven't bought them in years and pehnec.com currently resolves to 10.0.0.1; not sure what's going on.
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#89What do you do with your diamonds? Are they supposed to have nice piezoelectric properties or something?
Well, it's one of the hardest known materials...
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#90Really 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.
(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209972)