Understandblue
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Posts posted by Understandblue
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Yes I got it too - password was found in a data breach. It's a monitoring service in the Chrome Browser as part of their password manager. Definitely change your password. Etsy was another site with a data breach at the same time as well as Threadloom. Screenshot attached for those not familiar with this Chrome service.
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Sadly - this is one of the things that made me stop geocaching alone - which I used to really enjoy. We have giant parks and greenbelts here - and I was finding human waste, needles, large encampments and scary people more and more frequently and it just became frightening and unpleasant. I was happier worrying about coyotes and rattlesnakes. I enjoyed the hiking in more natural areas before it became a real problem - now I have to stick to urban trails to feel safe, and I've found most of the caches on the trails in my area. My brother in law doesn't get up as early as I do, or I'd hike with him more and feel better about it.
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I don't see any competition. It may just be another hobby to fill the time like the Munzees. I go Birding which is silly but I find some comparisons to caching. Except placing. When a rare bird shows up, birders race to refind it. I DNFd many birds. Birders sometimes compete to have a big day or year. So I can do it all. Fish, geocache, bird, and pokemon go all at the same time. It's just another past time
Birding isn't silly - actually 100% of the birders I've met I've met while geocaching. Otherwise they're a bit elusive.
All of these feed that same urge we have to be collectors, and "catch em all" and clear a list - and in the case of these three in particular - enjoy being outside while doing so. -
So when someone is sitting on their couch typing TFTC on a cache 100 miles away the app could say - sorry - the cache is too far away, and prevent logging.
This is an interesting proposal. However, I am not sure how it would work for those who do not log in the field.
I went out yesterday and did a bit of unplanned caching in the Adirondacks. For some of the finds, finding the cache I went back to my car and entered a found it log on my phone before driving to the next spot. On a couple of them I didn't have cellular access and couldn't log it through the app. In once case, I lost the connection before I got to the trailhead for the cache, and because I hadn't started navigating toward the cache it didn't even show up on the map.
I could see how the app could capture waypoints, so it would know that if one tried to armchair log a cache, it would know if one was ever near GZ. One could still log the cache from afar as long as the app had captured a waypoint near GZ (which wouldn't require a data connection).
Right, and if a person is trying to use a phone in a surprising number of places, there's no signal. And just being near GZ doesn't prove you found the 3.5/3.5 cache.
If the goal is to eliminate all armchair logging than this, by itself, would not be the ultimate solution. It could, however, make it a little bit harder to armchair log a cache from the app. Once again an idea which might provide a small improvement is dismissed because it's not a perfect solution.
Perfect is the sworn enemy of good.
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One of the technical aspects of Pokemon Go! might help cut down on the unintended virtuals that exist now in geocaching. Since PG tracks the player's location and prohibits certain things - for example, discouraging playing while driving, tracking miles walked for egg hatching, calculating your distance from gyms and pokestops etc., it could be super useful if the geocaching app did the same. So when someone is sitting on their couch typing TFTC on a cache 100 miles away the app could say - sorry - the cache is too far away, and prevent logging.
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4) No moldy logs.
5) No snake bites.
One of our most prolific cachers here was seriously injured by a snake bite and snake photos appear in many of my logs. It's a big, serious threat here in cache locations. This morning on my walk I heard a rattle off the trail I was on.
No need to stick your hand into a rockpile or a stump and end your life while nabbing a Jigglypuff
No snakes is a bit of a stretch, wasn't the body find down by a creek? There's a prone spot for snakes there.
Did they have to reach into the body to get the Pokemon and get bit by a rattlesnake?
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4) No moldy logs.
5) No snake bites.
One of our most prolific cachers here was seriously injured by a snake bite and snake photos appear in many of my logs. It's a big, serious threat here in cache locations. This morning on my walk I heard a rattle off the trail I was on.
No need to stick your hand into a rockpile or a stump and end your life while nabbing a Jigglypuff
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As a regular, long distance walker, I ran out of geocaches pretty quickly even though I live in an area with tons within walking distance. I didn't want to sacrifice my daily walks to get in the car and drive somewhere an hour away just so I could find caches on my walk - I'd rather just get out and walk. So, while I understand the distance rules, I think that one thing that could be learned is that a Pokemon Go! player can walk the same trails in their general area daily nearly indefinitely and still get new finds, where a saturated geocache suburb or trail system will virtually never have new finds because of the proximity rule.
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Wow, crickets for over two hours! Could cachers be out there playing that new....? Nah, must be a coincidence!
haha! The servers went down so it should get chatty again shortly.
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I read there are 3 million active GeoCachers. In less than a month, there are 21 million active Pokemon GO players.
Wow.
It's amazing how smartphones have changed the world. I remember when I started geocaching, reading a lot of scorn for people (like me) who found caches with an Iphone. I think that is a real shame - when you can see how that platform is in the hands of so many people, especially kids. This is one aspect of PG I think could really help geocaching. If everything they read tells them they're "doing it wrong" by using what they're most comfortable with, there's a good chance they'll move onto something that's more in line with the tools they use.
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There are already gossips about making all McDonalds POIs for PG in Japan. That's exactly the stuff I don't want to see happen to geocaching.
Because LPCs are more exciting?
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Something interesting that I've noticed is that people seem to be more inclined to walk from place to place while playing this new game. I've often thought it was a bit of a shame that geocaching often ends up being more car-based than it needs to be. I don't know anything about the actual game play experience or why it promotes walking more than our game does, but it's something to think about.
There are things you can only achieve by walking certain distances - so there are 2 KM eggs, 5 KM eggs, 10KM eggs - that can only be hatched by walking those distances. I've seen more kids walking outside in the past month than in the 10 years I've lived on this street!
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I don't see Pokemon Go as a competitor or a complement, but as a nuisance. Please, allow me to explain. Groundspeak/Geocaching emphasizes safety and respect in regards to trespassing, laws, CITO, etc. This insanely popular Pokemon Go game has people out in droves, clambering to chase down as many of these characters as possible with little to no regard (sometimes even blatant disregard) to private property, trespassing, etc., essentially giving us all a bad name. Yes, there are jerks in every organization; I get that. The fervor at which these Pokemon'ers compete has many doing really, really stupid things. Just locally we had a Pokemoner photographed on his motorcycle, barreling at high speeds into and on our hiking/cycling trail system. Not only does this destroy the trails, but it's extremely dangerous as kids, elderly, and everyone else use these trails. Trail users were yelling at him to stop and he just screamed about Pokemon and ignored their pleas. I'm happy to report that nobody was injured and the perp was caught by police after calls came in and his bike was impounded. Yes, one example, one bad seed. However, you can scan the news sites and find plenty of Pokemon examples, like the 15yr old, Arthur Digsby, that was shot and killed in NC yesterday for trespassing while chasing a Pokemon. I too have witnessed swarms of players trample gardens on our university grounds.
My wife, who doesn't cache, thinks Pokemon Go and Geocaching are one in the same. I worry that's what the general public may think as well and therefore tie the poor behavior to all GPS/smartphone scavenger hunt "games."
There are a bazillion instances of new geocachers destroying things, trespassing, etc. The culture develops over time and is enhanced by community feedback, and so will virtual games evolve. I see PG as an opportunity to introduce people to geocaching. The funsquashing around this game has been astonishing. Anything that gets people outside, moving around, and going to places of significance in their community shouldn't be dismissed if you love geocaching, IMHO. They are very similar in spirit. If people are going to make bad choices, they will make them whether they are geocachers, PGers, Munzeers, etc.
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I remember how many times I visited the site of my first find - it's very bewildering for a newbie. Message them and give them a few hints and welcome them to the hunt
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I live in North Jersey, and we have over 2000 black bear. (Probably more than New England.)
Off topic query for the geographically clueless.
Isn't New Jersey part of New England?
I've always thought of all those northeast states as New England.
Good Lord no!!
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, & Connecticut are New England.
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A philanthropic pirate!
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This is the best thread ever
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Any faves in Santa Fe? Headed there soon! Did most of the urban ones last year.
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There's no such thing as a munzee throwdown. It's a QR code that you "capture" with a code scanner on your phone. They may have placed the munzee to draw attention to your cache. Without a link to the Munzee it's hard to tell what the intent was.
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I've found three with decoys. Two I thought were very clever and it definitely added to my enjoyment of the caches.
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To any one that has been to my cache A Gated Sitution at a Rest Area GC2HBCH. I know of NO munzees or anything of the sort as I don't do them. There is a REAL container on site with a LOG and I will remove the munzee if I can find it.
That's not cool. You wouldn't want anyone to remove your cache because it was near a munzee or a letterbox or any number of other games. It's pretty easy to tell the difference between a munzee and a geocache.
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There are lots of non-smartphone people who leave TFTC or cut & paste logs. Why the H8erade for smartphone users?
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How did the date go? We're all dying to know.
+1
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I got to a nice, scenic park the other day...wandered into a wooded area with no trail in search of a 'precious' ammo box. About 250 feet later, I reach a spot with trees, wild undergrowth and rotting stumps. The ammo box was "hidden", as usual, next to a fallen tree and covered by a plank of bark. Ammo boxes can be incredibly unsatisfying in their own way...hidden in an unspectacular area of an otherwise terrific park. I'd've taken a weatherproof match tube hidden in a clever way over the poorly placed ammo box any day.
I just don't accept that ammo boxes are always better. There is a place for every type of container...so what irks me is the blanket statements about hide types, container types or locales. Nothing spoils caching more than talking to a cynical cacher.
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I like CLEVER hides. I don't care if they're big or small as long as they make me think. Getting to the GZ and seeing an URP with an ammo can under it is not nearly as exciting as some of the amazingly creative micros I've found in the woods. I do get that they can hold more toys, but as an adult cacher, I'd like to be presented with a challenge.
Thankfully, our smaller hides where I live are mostly very creative containers.
I love that the cache page shows me all the attributes I may or may not like so I can narrow my search.
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All of these feed that same urge we have to be collectors, and "catch em all" and clear a list - and in the case of these three in particular - enjoy being outside while doing so.
Geocaching.com data breach notice
in General geocaching topics
Posted · Edited by Understandblue
Correct. But the point is it's not a phishing scam and multiple Groundspeak users have been affected so it's not just one person reusing their password (which is a horrible idea
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So clearly someone has a list with some Groundspeak usernames and passwords - however it happened, it's affecting people and it's a good time to get a good secure random password.
IDNotify is another good monitoring service for being alerted if any of your logins are being bought and sold by nefarious types.