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

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#171

Post by Tyr42 » Wed, May 30, 2018, 3:45 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…

Compare synthetic vanilla flavouring vs plant based. Same molecule, but big price difference.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#172

Post by spraak » Wed, May 30, 2018, 3:46 AM UTC

ISL wrote: post #71

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…

I'd love for synthetic diamond to bring the price down on gemstones. A lot of people are engaged in arduous and risky work to produce natural stones. The environmental costs, too, are real. Modern high-quality synthetic materials, whether in gemstones or other uses, have so much to offer in fashion innovation. Indeed, diamond jewelers claim that silicon carbide (SiC) has "excess fire" as it has greater dispersion tha…

Your post is very poetic, thank you

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#173

Post by Animats » Wed, May 30, 2018, 3:49 AM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #170

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…

Exactly. Just wait for their counter-blow. They have enough money, resources and incentives to try to destroy man-made diamonds for at least a few more decades.

Not like they used to. De Beers used to have a monopoly on distribution, but that's been broken.

You can get synthetic diamonds on Alibaba now. Some of which really are diamond.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#174

Post by ThomPete » Wed, May 30, 2018, 3:49 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #133

godzillabrennus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not how disbelieving works. People disbelieve facts that would cost them to believe. If I believe in climate change, I have to make expensive life changes (sell the SUV, buy a Tesla, etc). Therefore I will not believe in it. This belief is 100% honest, BTW. This is key to understand! For diamonds, the incentives are reversed. If I believe that artificial diamonds are as good as the natural kind, I can get a we…

Most people believe in climate change also the so called sceptics as the climate is mostly changing. The disagreement mostly is about how severe its going to be and how much human affect it.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#175

Post by benjaminl » Wed, May 30, 2018, 3:53 AM UTC

GhostVII wrote: post #154

benjaminl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "aren't real". In what way is a manufactured diamonds not real? My understanding is that they are in every respect indistinguishable except for perhaps being too perfect under magnification.

In the same way that a fake Picasso isn't real because Picasso never made it, a lab grown diamond isn't "real" because the earth didn't make it.

What makes a Picasso painting a Picasso is that it was made by him. What makes a diamond a diamond is its molecular structure.

Following this logic sea salt isn't "real" salt like regular table salt (which is mined), since it wasn't mined from the earth, but created from sea water.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#176

Post by sigi45 » Wed, May 30, 2018, 3:54 AM UTC

ISL wrote: post #71

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…

I'd love for synthetic diamond to bring the price down on gemstones. A lot of people are engaged in arduous and risky work to produce natural stones. The environmental costs, too, are real. Modern high-quality synthetic materials, whether in gemstones or other uses, have so much to offer in fashion innovation. Indeed, diamond jewelers claim that silicon carbide (SiC) has "excess fire" as it has greater dispersion tha…

We as humans just need to be less stupid.

Srsly no one cares if a stone is real or not.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#177

Post by Turing_Machine » Wed, May 30, 2018, 3:55 AM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #100

21 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, don't forget about people who are opposed to nuclear because of Fukushima. A good filter of people who don't understand science and how safe the nuclear industry is.

I'm pro nuclear, but given that the side effects on the oceans and hence the entire planet are still to be accounted for and that we won't know before decades, I find that comment quite arrogant. It's also discarding the real suffering of all the people that were affected by the 3 major nuclear accidents. I have a friend of mine who his medicated for life because of Chernobyl. Black and white are rarely the winning c…

> I'm pro nuclear, but given that the side effects on the oceans and hence the entire planet are still to be accounted for and that we won't know before decades, I find that comment quite arrogant.

The ocean already has about 4.5 billion tons of naturally-occurring uranium in it, as well as many other radioactive substances. Fukushima wouldn't have made a significant difference in that figure if they'd ground up the entire reactor to a powder and dumped every single bit of it in the ocean. You could perhaps produce localized contamination by doing that, but not on the scale of the oceans as a whole.

For that matter, the Soviet Union used to dump their scrap submarine reactors straight into the ocean. They did that with a bunch of them.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#178

Post by sunstone » Wed, May 30, 2018, 3:57 AM UTC

Aluminium also went through a transition from precious to a commodity early in the last century. It's cautionary tale for those who expect that "natural" diamonds will continue to have pricing power in the market as time goes by.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#179

Post by philsnow » Wed, May 30, 2018, 3:57 AM UTC

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.

I think the brilliance here is not the "may not be forever" bit, but the "fashion jewelry" jab (without giving a crass label to the mined diamonds). We have associations with the term "costume jewelry" that they're trying to have cross over.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#180

Post by wbeckler » Wed, May 30, 2018, 3:59 AM UTC

Tyr42 wrote: post #171

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…

Compare synthetic vanilla flavouring vs plant based. Same molecule, but big price difference.

For most food uses, salt gets a similar treatment.