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When Gold Isn’t Worth the Price
- nether 11y agoOn a sidenote, it looks like the HN policy of preserving original headlines is completely out the window.
- bostonpete 11y agoI don't really understand the policy. Earlier this week the article about the journalist who tried to bit a barrel of oil had its title changed after the fact to not match the original.
- kelukelugames 11y agoWe change it when it's sensational or not descriptive.
- dang 11y agoOne temporary deviation does not a policy change make. We can't control what users do! (Submitted title was "Tiffany Co. CEO on environmental impact of jewelry". Since the original title isn't misleading or linkbait, the guideline would say not to change it, so we changed it back.)
- maaku 11y agoAnd did a great disservice.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoI'm still very much for the idea of having both the original title and an editorialised title which would largely avoid these "why was the title altered" exchanges. Similarly when a source link is changed the original link should be kept, some people like to read other's interpretation of the source, other people like to read the original and digest it themselves; oftentimes it's nice to read both.
- tptacek 11y agoWho chooses the editorialized title? It can't be the submitter; submitters aren't supposed to have a privileged position.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoI'd have thought the submitter would put one if they felt it was needed or a mod could put one if the submitter hadn't. If the submitter puts a bad title then I guess it might still need editing ... so still space for those that want to argue about it! Win-win!!
- tptacek 11y agoIt's a principle of HN that submitters don't get extra privileges w/r/t stories. Once they're posted, they're community property. So the feature you propose can't be as simple as a second text input for the editorialized title: that gives the submitter a kind of "super-comment" that other community members don't get.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoBut submissions themselves are a sort of super-comment, and you get to put a meta comment if you want to ... The only solution that I can see that avoids "priveleges" is to actually give mod priveleges that allow a cadre of users to give a [sub-]title iff they respect neutrality of the title. Going this far seems a bit OTT though whilst there do seem to be less than perfect options that are better than the current position.
- lwhalen 11y agoApropos of nothing, I noticed the CSS for mobile has been tweaked recently. I can comfortably read comments in portrait mode on my Android now, thank you very much!
- ars 11y agoSee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10489499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10489499
- sharp11 11y agoOP here. I wasn't aware of this policy. I rewrote the original headline because I found it not very descriptive. Headlines are often clickbaiting or impressionistic. I'd rather have it say clearly what's in the article.
- ISL 11y agoPerhaps someday Tiffany will consider synthetic gemstones, too. The nuclei of both natural and synthetic stones were born in the same supernovae, and the environmental and human costs are far smaller.
- p1mrx 11y agoThe patent on silicon carbide gemstones just expired a few months ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite#Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite#Applications
- hippo8 11y agoIsn't it sad, that we know non of this makes no sense at all. Yet, you and I, we do everything to get our hands on some of those "non-synthetic stones" in form or another.
- Animats 11y agoThe diamond industry has origin tracking requirements for diamonds, in something called the Kimberly Process. This is ostensibly to reduce sales of "blood diamonds" from conflict zones, but there's a strong suspicion that it's to keep synthetic diamonds from taking over the industry. The diamond industry dug itself a hole with its PR. The best diamonds are supposed to be "flawless", i.e. perfect crystals. The semiconductor substrate industry is in the business of making perfect crystals. Semiconductor crystal growing technology applied to diamond works quite well.[1] DeBeers keeps struggling to build machines which can distinguish synthetic diamonds from natural ones. They claim total success so far. Others disagree.[2] In any case, it now takes about $50,000 in equipment to detect good synthetic diamonds. As for synthetic diamond abrasives, those are about $165/kilogram.[3] That stuff is produced by the metric ton. [1] http://sciodiamond.com/ http://sciodiamond.com/ [2] http://www.diamonds.net/News/NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=46436 http://www.diamonds.net/News/NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=46436 [3] http://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-synthetic-diamond-grit.html http://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-synthetic-diamond-grit...
- fiatmoney 11y agoI'm glad we have organizations like the NY Times to tell us when Morality requires we keep a people impoverished because they have the bad luck to live on a landscape their readership finds aesthetically pleasing.
- jacobolus 11y ago“People” = mining companies building open-pit mines in the Alaska wilderness? Pretty sure those people weren’t ever “impoverished”.
- fiatmoney 11y agoYou should really talk to the local population in places around former Washington lumber forests or West Virginia coal mines, and ask them whether in their opinion environmentalism was good for their interests. Maybe this particular mine was even a bad idea; Wikipedia at least indicates most Alaskans were against it. But of course in the NYT the opinion of the actual people affected is not considered, just the moral preening over Untouched Landscapes.
- SamReidHughes 11y agoIs your philosophy that any law that hurts the interests of a subset of the population for the good of the whole is a bad law?
- jacobolus 11y agoBurning coal for electricity is rendering the whole planet uninhabitable, coal mining is one of the most dangerous possible occupations, and the toxic byproducts from coal mining poison the local population and local wildlife. West Virginia’s economy is a slightly tough case, because they’re in the mountains and are relatively isolated away from the coast or big rivers, without much productive farmland, and their economy is dominated by chemical production and coal mining (and more recently also shale gas production). Otherwise there’s not too much going on, and WV is the second poorest state (by median household income) in the US and has the second lowest life expectancy, both after Mississippi, and has the lowest proportion of college graduates of any state. As a matter of national policy, I’m not sure what the best way is to help West Virginia. Better federal support for their healthcare, education, and anti-poverty programs would be a start, but what they really need is a more diversified economy. It’s a hard problem. Coal mining is on its way out one way or another, with continuing low gas prices, dropping solar/wind prices, and increasing national and international concern about CO2 emissions.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- throwaway2048 11y agoHow much impact would this have? Being as gold is a fully fungible commodity, wouldn't the "bad gold" simply end up in bullion/coins/gold bars, and the gold that otherwise would have been used end up in jewlery, with no real impacts on price or demand for the bad gold? And being as there is no way to track gold, couldn't it just be laundered via similar channels?
- maxerickson 11y agoYeah, it doesn't seem like they could move the price any, limiting any impact on non certified mines. I guess an analog to the Forest Stewardship Council could make people feel better by creating a system to track the production of certified mines and then allowing the first buyer to use their label.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- elipsey 11y agoThis is not soley a trade off between job creation and "environmentalism", and resource extraction is not always net win for a local economy. Also, public land is involved, so consider that the public has a legitimate interest in the outcome then it might not have in interfering with a mutually agreed upon transaction between private parties. There is a lot of money to be made from resource extraction, but most of it does not accrue to workers or local residents. In many cases, employment increases for a while, which benefits a minority of citizens while the external costs of business are socialized, and then eventually the part of the resource that is cost-effective to capture is exhausted, commodity prices change, or for whatever reason production stops. Meanwhile, there has been less incentive for the state to develop a diverse economy based on taxing earned income then there would have been without the income from selling extraction rights, and everyone who lives near the project is back where they started: the jobs are gone, but the public is often left with a big mess to clean up. In addition there are other major employment sectors and stakeholders that may be negatively impacted, such as fisheries and tourism, and legally guaranteed native subsistence rights. In other words, the kind of industry often results in a "resouce cursed" economy and polity. I grew up in Alaska, and I own land in Southwestern Alaska. There was a closed mine in my home town. The reality of the situation is, the resource is so valuable that as a political matter, it's virtually impossible for state or local residents to prevent the state from selling extraction rights on public land because the local citizens can't compete financially with an out of state lobby. Several of our state politicians have been convicted of accepting bribes from private companies. There is simply so much money to be made that extraction projects on public land are almost inevitable, with or without the consent of the public. I'm not certainly not opposed in general to mining or oil production, but if the resource is public, the decision should be made democratically. Should the state sell mineral rights on public land if the majority of it's population doesn't want to? Shouldn't people who live near the public land get a vote?
- sft 11y agoIt will be worth the price when the kikes say so
- rbanffy 11y agoEventually, we'll find out gold is not edible...
- panglott 11y agoA large salmon fishery is inestimably more valuable than a gold mine, even if gold is worth more money than salmon. Salmon has real value as food while gold is merely cash. A sustainably managed fishery is an ongoing resource that could supply food for a thousand years or more. It is foolish to destroy a renewable long-term resource for a short-term cash grab.