De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds • Hacker News Board

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#101

Post by Johnny555 » Wed, May 30, 2018, 1:51 AM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #26

> "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," said De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver. I'm simply speechless at the stupidity of this statement. A contender for one of the outright dumbest CEO-speak lies of the decade.

It may be a lie, it may be marketing speak, but it's not dumb - they are sitting on a huge stockpile of natural stones, admitting that lab grown diamonds are the same (or even better due to the lack of flaws) than natural diamonds would lose a lot of money. So he has to say something that preserves the value in natural diamonds.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#102

Post by redstripe » Wed, May 30, 2018, 1:53 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #25

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the staggering number of anti-GMO laws and business ad campaigns.

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

That's not saying much. Most of us don't understand most science behind anything outside of our limited specializations. These beliefs are manifestations of people's distrust of large institutions.

People believe GMO is bad because they believe that large corporations would do anything for a buck regardless of long term consequences.

Alien abduction, anti-vaxers, 9/11 inside job and other conspiracy theories are just ways for people to express their distrust of government.

Global warming deniers don't trust the liberal media.

The pattern is: I don't trust X. What is the worst thing I could believe about X.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#103

Post by acchow » Wed, May 30, 2018, 1:54 AM UTC

degenerate wrote: post #95

acchow wrote: post #33

De Beers hasn't admitted defeat. They've pivoted strategies. "De Beers launched a new jewelry brand on Tuesday [...] The brand, called 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," Genius attack from marketing.

So the position is, it's not a shiny rock with natural scarcity and artificial inflated value because we hoard all the diamonds... but instead, a shiny rock with artificial scarcity and value because we hoard all the laboratories and control price. I fear the publishing and journal industries will stick around for another 100 years, just like De Beers has done to the diamond industry. We'll still be in the same crapp…

How can they hoard all the laboratories? This isn't a repeat of the early 20th century. It is way easier to make a lab than to find a new diamond mine.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#104

Post by dreamfactored » Wed, May 30, 2018, 1:55 AM UTC

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…

It's just the path to commodity that every product follows. That's inevitable with gems now that synthetic stones are equivalent, so the choice facing De Beers is to stick with expensive mined stones and die out while the market evolves, or to get a big chunk of the action. The only thing is that to pull it off they had better be ready to cannibalise the existing business and let it go. They need a very long term plan which doesn't always revolve around the next few quarters which might be a tough sell with shareholders.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#105

Post by Johnny555 » Wed, May 30, 2018, 1:55 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #35

xur17 wrote: post #3

Are there any perceptible differences between these and 'natural' diamonds?

Yes. They put a logo in it.

Only for their own branded diamonds, there's no requirement that other manufacturers add any distinguishing feature.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#106

Post by sametmax » Wed, May 30, 2018, 1:57 AM UTC

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.

That's a rather elegant and funny way to put it.

Unfortunately, a huge issue is that it's almost impossible to be in the control group anymore. Or if it is, it demands huge efforts and is very hard to check the success of it.

I understand the scientists defending the GMO. But quite often, they assume people in charge are making decisions the same way they do. However, the people in charge often make decisions according to economical factors, science being just a tool toward that goal.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#107

Post by ridgeguy » Wed, May 30, 2018, 1:57 AM UTC

19235982958329 wrote: post #91

Can someone summarize the progress in synthetic diamond research for the past two decades? From mid-90s to early 00s I remember the diamond hype, from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, to the practical refinement of making cost-effective synthetic gem quality diamonds, high-frequency heat-dissipating semiconductor wafers, and speculation of biocompatible nanotechnology such as respirocytes. What problems were encoun…

In general:

Two pathways have led to economically viable synthetic gem diamonds. One is chemical vapor deposition (CVD), the other is high pressure, high temperature (HPHT) growth.

The successful CVD makers use hydrogen+methane and high power microwaves (typically 915MHz, 30-60kW) to form plasmas that cause diamond to deposit and grow on small diamond seeds. IIa Technologies, Diamond Foundry are two of these.

HPHT is an old technology, the first to unambiguously demonstrate diamond synthesis in the 1950s. It grows diamonds in metal solvents at high temperature and pressure (typically 1000°C at a million psi). It has come to be successful in gem diamond production due to better press design and use of modern process controls.

The business challenge in gem diamond production isn't any aspect of the technology. It's the sales.

De Beers has a hundred years of channels for whatever type of diamond they want to sell. Newcomers have to build their own channels, largely because the older ones are highly loyal to De Beers and won't handle goods from any other source.

As the CEO of one of the most successful synthetic diamond producers recently told me, if their cost of production were zero, it would still be a major challenge to sell their gems.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#108

Post by userbinator » Wed, May 30, 2018, 2:02 AM UTC

senectus1 wrote: post #51

foxcon or Samsung need to work on the artificial diamond tech for phone screens. That'll put the industry solidly in the here to stay state, permanently. Probably shut debeers up permanently as well.

It sounds like a good idea until you realise that besides the extreme hardness, diamond is also extremely brittle and thus likely to shatter from impact --- and the thought of having xray-transparent shards of diamond forcefully embedded into one's skin is quite unpleasant.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#109

Post by dylan604 » Wed, May 30, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

godzillabrennus wrote: post #15

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…

Smart move. Throw enough marketing dollars at misinformation and you can convince hordes of people to doubt facts. Case in point. Despite overwhelming evidence there are people today who still debate climate change.

At the risk of diverging into politics, it's amazing how "influencers" can do this with social media posts without spending lots of money. As long as the information is from someone (company/individual/etc) perceived as reputable, people will believe almost anything at face value. It's much easier than researching something on their own.

Whatever the message, say it loud and often, and it becomes accepted as true. Call it spin, call it PR, call it marketing, it works.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#110

Post by adrianratnapala » Wed, May 30, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

Iv wrote: post #54

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…

Interestingly enough, the way to differentiate man-made from natural diamonds is to look for flaws and impurities: man-made diamonds are much more likely to be purer and flawless. If you want a natural stone that is "forever", look into the nature shop, they have tons of beautiful solid stones. If you want a shiny, pure gem stone, lab-grown is going to give the best quality. Natural diamonds are hopefully becoming a…

> man-made diamonds are much more likely to be purer and flawless.

Hmm, both natural and man-made stones have price/quality trade-offs. I am no expert in the field, but I think both kinds are post-sorted into quality grades based on what flaws are found. And I guess labs can also tune their growth parameters for different trade-offs.

So yes, for a given price and size, the artificial stone will have better quality -- but that is just another way of saying they are cheaper.