The South China Morning Post writes that the dominant diamond player De Beers is reacting badly to the arrival of large numbers of good, tiny, lab-grown diamonds. The synthetics challenge the widely-promoted assertion that diamond prices only go up. However, labs are now able to produce chemically identical gem-quality stones, indistinguishable by the naked eye from mined diamonds, in quantities pushing 200k carats of diamonds per month. Synthetic diamonds still only account for %1 of rough diamond sales globally, but that is expected to expand to between 7.5% to 15% by 2020.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday November 19 2018, @04:09PM
As far as I can tell, the reason they aren't considered "real gems" is that it's possible to create them without slave labor.
Seriously, the amount of misery that has come from people liking shiny rocks is absolutely horrifying.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.