this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 205 points 1 year ago (4 children)

MFs worried about bill gates trying to chip them didn't even think about big parma

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Big Parma! 🀣

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Also real quick

The trackers are in the shell which you don't eat (or aren't supposed to eat)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which I will use it when making tomato sauce.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I, too, like my chips with dip.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Somewhat of a tangent, but can we stop caring about the location where a product was made and focus solely on quality itself? Like, I bet the counterfeiters make a lot of money by producing quality cheese that taste just as good but are just made somewhere else.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Some foods do have specific, regional character. Is the milk or yeast from the next county over going to make a cheese that tastes the same? Idk but you can get very similar styles of cheese made elsewhere.

That all being said, I can see why calling same thing Parmesan when it's not from Parma, is not entirely truthful, if consumers care about origin. Which in the EU they certainly do.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

You have a good point. At the same time, I'd like to pay what I think I'm getting. If someone is selling me something and making me think it's something else, I think that's wrong.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

We are focusing on both, afaik. I'm pretty sure the doc/aop/igp qualifications relate to quality as well as geography. It's not just about the location.

And there's nothing stopping anyone from making a better cheese, naming it whatever else other than a trademarked name and building a reputation for quality. So I don't see what the issue is.

Edit: happy now?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I for one really do not care whether it's called Parmesan or Parmigiano Regiano. Good cheese is good cheese.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Can only judge quality by trademarks and place of origin is essentially an extension of trademark. I don't really have a problem with it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If it wasn't strictly bound to origin but could be, say, at least "licensed out" (perhaps with the places of origin still at least getting a small cut) it could be a win-win-win.

But as it is it's just artificially inflating prices of goods that are potentially just as good (or in some cases potentially even worse) than some alternatives.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (11 children)

You do understand that quality isn't based on who produced it, but on the product itself, right? Cheese doesn't suddenly get better because it has the Parmesan trademark. Quality is supposed to be an objective measure of the thing itself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Maybe my argument wasn't as plainitively obvious as I thought it was. The only way to develop an opinion on quality is to personally trust the supplier or rely on trademarks. Without either you will not know if you're getting the same product and quality will vary wildly. In an open market, the only way is to rely on trademarks. Place of origin is an extension of the trademark system.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

No, quality is independent of location of production. Proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say. Reputation is tied to the producer. Quality is tied to an individual instance of the product. Thats why certain things have QA tags. This technology doesn't represent quality. It only verifies sourcing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As long as the counterfeit cheese meets all production regulations and is safe to eat I dont care. But the truth is the counterfeit probably cut amlot of corners and isn't that safe and if people get sick will be much harder to track and prevent future issues.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is literally just a type of NFC. The same type of thing that's used whenever you scan your credit card or use an Amiibo. It is interesting that it doesn't use RFID standards, but conceptually it's the same idea of an ultra-low-power chip with an antenna with the only purpose being to transmit a few bytes of data when scanned.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think the appeal here is the chip is uncloneable, unlike ordinary rfid tags, so counterfeit products can't just clone it serial number. I wonder how useful it is in practice though. Unlike RFID tags which can be scanned by phones, customers probably don't have the proprietary scanner in hand to scan this chip, right? How do you know your cheese wheel is fake or not in that situation. You'll probably have to trust the store you bought it from, but if the store want to sell fake product, adding this chip to real products probably won't prevent those fraudulent stores from selling fake products to their customers. Am I missing something here?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also, it's claimed that it's uncloneable. We'll see how well that actually stands up to a counterfeit market with lots of money to throw at it

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They'd need a crap ton of money to throw at it lol, especially if the cheese makers decide to use Mifare NFC tech. That relies on the chips being signed using a write-once private key, and optionally also returning a kind of OTP that is only known to the NFC chip when it's sent a special command or "challenge".

Transit cards and contact less/chipped bank cards rely on something similar to prevent cloning (although Bank cards are actually running a Java-based OS, and can perform more complex calculations, or even just applications as programmed by the bank)

I'd be shocked if they picked some insecure type of nfc tech lol, or relied on the chip IDs which are easily cloneable

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

End users (so to speak) usally don't buy full parmesan wheels, anyway ;)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Not near field, since it uses photovoltaic cells with a pulsed laser for power.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can't wait to play DOOM on a cheese wheel

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Cheesing through demons, hell yeah

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

I can definitely get on board with this cheese to chip ratio

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

β€œHow did they get root access to the parmesan wheels!?” -Future cheese hacker film

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

They were members of the wheel group

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

they were know as the hacker 4cheese

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The photocells, when illuminated by a pulsed laser, provide power to the electronic circuits on the chip with ~10% efficiency. The chip transmits its ID through modulated current in the antenna. The varying magnetic field around the chip is received by a nearby coil in the reader, and the signal is digitized, analyzed, and decoded.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5896163/

So it's security is that it's not near field based but photovoltaic based. You'd have to copy it's design to clone it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

That's pretty cool even without the cheesy factor

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Ya know, the concept of cheese DRM never even crossed my mind...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How in the hell do you counterfeit CHEESE????

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They make it somewhere else, and pass it off as if it’s made in a region with a protected name. For example, making sparkling wine in California and saying it’s champagne.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

We should have done that with poutine...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

omg cheese fraud is real??

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Finally! 5gs to go with my five cheese.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Bah! Foiled again!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Terminator: Gorgonzola Annihilation

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Inb4 local Discounter sΓΌd because customer accidentally ate microchip

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Its micro-transponders can add tracking and authentication to electronics and computing goods, product packaging, automotive components, and more.

This statement certainly applies in 2023, with people packing ubiquitous smart devices, many household goods becoming intelligent and connected, and the relentless march of the (A)IoT.

When a modulated laser pulse scans the chip, power goes through its circuits and transmits a unique code via ultra-low radio frequency waves.

According to the maker, p-Chip devices are smaller, cheaper (a few cents each), tougher, and more secure than nearest competitor RFID.

Italy's parmesan makers are testing this technology, with over 100,000 cheeses maturing for the past year with p-Chips micro-transponders in the rind.

This testing phase has been deemed necessary as the years-long maturation process for the cheese, including hot saltwater immersion, can degrade alternatives like QR codes and RFID tags.


The original article contains 424 words, the summary contains 138 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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