Buying anything without a microchip?

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False Prophet
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Buying anything without a microchip?

I personally know a guy who tries to buy as many stuffs without any microchip as possible because he is afraid of being eavesdropped or messed with. It translates to he uses a lot of refurbished stuffs originally made by the Soviets.

Is this kind of guy common in the US? He is not a survivalist guy, so I don't think it is a kind of fetish aka Justin Timberlake's "Man of the Woods". And how possible is it to do that in your part of the world?

I maybe want to start doing the same thing, but not because I'm scared of anything. I'm really clumsy, so anything uncomplicated and easy to fix would be appreciated.
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Buying anything without a microchip?

No, that's not common... he's just mentally ill.

That whole schtick about microchips is a classic paranoid anti-government conspiracy theory. It usually links into a belief in related, deeply antisemitic, conspiracy theories about a "New World Order" run by any of several alleged, and fictitious, secret organizations that are monitoring people clandestinely with secret microchips for purposes of social control or implanting people with microchips as a form of evil mind control. That's a tiny minority demographic of the poorly educated that has a lot of overlap with survivalists and other crazies.

It's really not possible to get most appliances without microcontrollers of some kind, though the people who adhere to these conspiracy theories usually aren't computer literate or tech savvy. You'll often find hilarious irony in them posting about alleged GPS tracking microchips in vaccines using a smart phone with an embedded GPS receiver.
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False Prophet
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Re: Buying anything without a microchip?

Seto Kaiba wrote: Tue Sep 07, 2021 10:53 am No, that's not common... he's just mentally ill.

That whole schtick about microchips is a classic paranoid anti-government conspiracy theory. It usually links into a belief in related, deeply antisemitic, conspiracy theories about a "New World Order" run by any of several alleged, and fictitious, secret organizations that are monitoring people clandestinely with secret microchips for purposes of social control or implanting people with microchips as a form of evil mind control. That's a tiny minority demographic of the poorly educated that has a lot of overlap with survivalists and other crazies.

It's really not possible to get most appliances without microcontrollers of some kind, though the people who adhere to these conspiracy theories usually aren't computer literate or tech savvy. You'll often find hilarious irony in them posting about alleged GPS tracking microchips in vaccines using a smart phone with an embedded GPS receiver.
The weird thing is A. He isn't even American; B. He isn't a conspiracy guy, other than the who chip thing; and C. He doesn't have schizophrenia, as far as I know. He wasn't aware of the New World Order or any similar conspiracies when I tried to goad him to talk about them. But I don't think he knows the difference between microcontrollers and microprocessors like you said.

I've started to think that he either lied about the chip thing to mess with me, and just really likes collecting Soviet stuffs; or some nut convinced him of that a long time ago and he just blindly follow it without never really looking into the matter.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Buying anything without a microchip?

False Prophet wrote: Tue Sep 07, 2021 10:15 pm

The weird thing is A. He isn't even American; B. He isn't a conspiracy guy, other than the who chip thing; and C. He doesn't have schizophrenia, as far as I know. He wasn't aware of the New World Order or any similar conspiracies when I tried to goad him to talk about them. But I don't think he knows the difference between microcontrollers and microprocessors like you said.

I've started to think that he either lied about the chip thing to mess with me, and just really likes collecting Soviet stuffs; or some nut convinced him of that a long time ago and he just blindly follow it without never really looking into the matter.
Most conspiracy theorists are believing in a small selected set.
https://www.sciencealert.com/all-of-us- ... of-control

I believe some brands of China do try to spy on you though.
Tests have been shown that a Xiaomi phone will transmit a wi-fi signal even when no sim card is installed and wi-fi is turned off and will send a signal to a location in Beijing if you insert a sim card in it or saved a new contact.(but the length of the signal is likely just the name and the phone number.) The test was done in a Faraday's cage so no external signals. I also stopped using WeChat within half an hour because it says my message contains political sensitive words and blocked it, it was just a message asking an uncle(who invited me to use WeChat to begin with and a pretty pro-Beijing person) to lunch on 4th June back in 2006-ish, the block isn't automatic because it only came about 30 seconds after I send the message.
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Buying anything without a microchip?

False Prophet wrote: Tue Sep 07, 2021 10:15 pm The weird thing is A. He isn't even American; [...]
That kind of conspiracy theory is not uniquely American. Indeed, many of these conspiracy theories (and especially the ones with ties to anti-semitic conspiracies) originate in Europe.

False Prophet wrote: Tue Sep 07, 2021 10:15 pm [...] B. He isn't a conspiracy guy, [...]
He obviously is... because, based on what you've said, he's living his life around one of the older modern conspiracy theories.

False Prophet wrote: Tue Sep 07, 2021 10:15 pm [...] and C. He doesn't have schizophrenia, as far as I know.
Not every mental illness is schizophrenia... and if your friend there sincerely believes what you've said he does, he's got classic clinical paranoia or paranoid dementia. The belief that the government has nothing better to do than to monitor random people using microchips, and that the government could keep it completely secret for decades, is a really just complete insanity. Governments SUCK at keeping secrets.

There are governments like China that do try to spy on their citizens, or foreign nationals, but that's done using software not "microchips"... which is the reason behind the cybersecurity community's repeated pushes to block services like TikTok in the west because they have been proven to send your personal information to the PRC.

False Prophet wrote: Tue Sep 07, 2021 10:15 pm I've started to think that he either lied about the chip thing to mess with me, and just really likes collecting Soviet stuffs; or some nut convinced him of that a long time ago and he just blindly follow it without never really looking into the matter.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Buying anything without a microchip?

Seto Kaiba wrote: Wed Sep 08, 2021 7:46 am Not every mental illness is schizophrenia... and if your friend there sincerely believes what you've said he does, he's got classic clinical paranoia or paranoid dementia. The belief that the government has nothing better to do than to monitor random people using microchips, and that the government could keep it completely secret for decades, is a really just complete insanity. Governments SUCK at keeping secrets.
Not to mention it only takes a simple check like what I mentioned up there to determine if a device is sending out signals without your control and where the signal is supposed to go to.

Also, I wonder if he is still driving those old cars, because most newer cars have chips in them.
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Buying anything without a microchip?

MythSearcher wrote: Wed Sep 08, 2021 11:07 pm Also, I wonder if he is still driving those old cars, because most newer cars have chips in them.
It'd have to be quite an old car... computerized engine controls entered common use in the mid-1970s, and multiplex computer networks for automotive use were introduced in 1991.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Buying anything without a microchip?

Seto Kaiba wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:00 am
It'd have to be quite an old car... computerized engine controls entered common use in the mid-1970s, and multiplex computer networks for automotive use were introduced in 1991.
Well, come to think about it, if he is not American, maybe he doesn't own a car.
It is actually common for Asians to not own a car, for example, owning a car is a luxury, especially in Hong Kong.(taking taxi everyday is actually cheaper than the cheapest cars)
False Prophet
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Re: Buying anything without a microchip?

Seto Kaiba wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:00 am It'd have to be quite an old car... computerized engine controls entered common use in the mid-1970s, and multiplex computer networks for automotive use were introduced in 1991.
Here in Vietnam you could still buy old models of UAZ trucks and minibuses that actually were produced less than 10 years ago. I heard that even into the 2000s Russian carmakers kept making the same 60s and 70s models.

Also, I wouldn't call all government inept at keeping secrets. Looking at you, Pakistan, one of the most paranoia nations on Earth.
MythSearcher wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:34 am Well, come to think about it, if he is not American, maybe he doesn't own a car.
It is actually common for Asians to not own a car, for example, owning a car is a luxury, especially in Hong Kong.(taking taxi everyday is actually cheaper than the cheapest cars)
He doesn't, actually. His family has three of those Honda Dream that used to be popular here, and he contracted out to get someone else (actually the older brother of one of my old classmates) to carry his goods to the retailers. Owning a car is not as prestigious as it used to be in Vietnam, though I would argue that most people don't really see the advantage of owning one. The streets are narrow, traffic jams are regular, and parking spaces are expensive.

Anyway, using vintage stuffs has actually become a trend here. Sometimes it is nostalgia, but sometimes it has real benefits--like, I've heard that it's easier to fix the old Soviet electric fan motors than the modern Vietnamese ones, or that the old cassette players are superior to the new models because the latter are really cheaply made (most audiophiles have abandoned their cassette collections long ago).
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