Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Happy Mother's Day!
You can take that lightly, and I suppose that most of us do for a good part of our life, but there is no one else that carried you and gave birth to you or has the same type of feelings for you. More than likely there is no one that has cared for you or worried for you any more than your mother.
Time comes and time goes. In my life, that person that cared for me now needs my help and care. That person that held my hand when I tried to walk, now needs a hand. In my later years, I can look back and see the years and stages in life a little differently, knowing that probably some day not too far away I'll never have a chance to talk to her in this life again. The person that I depended upon, now depends upon me. Some things I can't do that I'd like to. Some I'd like to fix, but can't. I know she had the same type of wishes for me, I hope I made her feel that through it all, it turned out pretty good.
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May 2 - 5 was Division Week for investors in the Mel Fisher organization in Key West. Division Week is when investors received thei split of the previous year's finds.
The Fisher crews made a few recent finds. A cannon ball was found on the Margarita site. An eight reale was also chiseled out of bottom rock.
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After posting a bit about the information war yesterday, I read an article from the New York Times under the headline
Hackers Hit Dozens of Countries Exploiting Stolen N.S.A. Tools
...By late Friday the attacks had spread to more than 74 countries, according to security firms tracking the spread... Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity firm, said Russia was the worst-hit, followed by Ukraine, India and Taiwan. Reports of attacks also came from Latin America and Africa.
Elsewhere I read that one Los Angeles hospital paid thousands of dollars o ransom. More from the same article follows.
...Security experts described the attacks as the digital equivalent of a perfect storm. They began with a simple phishing email, similar to the one Russian hackers used in the attacks on the Democratic National Committee and other targets last year. They then quickly spread through victims’ systems using a hacking method that the N.S.A. is believed to have developed as part of its arsenal of cyberweapons. And finally they encrypted the computer systems of the victims, locking them out of critical data, including patient records in Britain...
...The attacks on Friday appeared to be the first time a cyberweapon developed by the N.S.A., funded by American taxpayers and stolen by an adversary had been unleashed by cybercriminals against patients, hospitals, businesses, governments and ordinary citizens...
...They also showed how easily a cyberweapon can wreak havoc, even without shutting off a country’s power grid or its cellphone network...
We are all computer users and vulnerable. You need to be aware of the dangers. Digital technologies are becoming a bigger part of our lives. We all need to know something about the new technologies. The very nature of treasure and treasure hunting is changing.
You probably know about Bitcoin. It is a monetary system in which payments are made and received by transfering units of digital money outside of the national monetary systems. I can't really explain it well without taking more time so you'll have to look into it yourself if you want to know more about it. There are no physical coins or bills aassociated with Bitcoin. It is entirely digital.
As you know, the economy is becoming increasingly digital. That has a direct impact on how much change you'll find on the beaches. People carry less cash. They rely more and more on plastic and other forms of payment. That affects metal detecting directly and immediately. In the future it will transform treasure hunting in a variety of ways. Some are predicting that in the not too distant future, coins and cash will not be used at all.
Some detectorists have told me that they find fewer coins on the beach these days because people are carrying less cash. Some attribute at least part of that to the increase in the number of people detecting.
I mentioned not long ago one place where a lot of old coins were found, and I think it is because that is where parking fees were collected in the old days. If there were parking meters that required change or if an admission or parking fee required change, you would find more change at that beach. Also beach snack shops, businesses or concessions would also result in more change being lost on the beach. Less money is being exchanged at places like that now too.
It used to be possible to go out and pick up a couple of dollars of change almost any day on any busy beach. It seems that is not the case anymore.
Information can be a type of treasure. Computer code can be treasure. Personal information can be treasure. Pirates sail the web looking to hijack personal information that they can sell.
I feel like talking more about computer security and our nation, but won't do that right now, but treasure hunters do need to be aware of the big picture and what is going on. It is good to know something about new technologies, including both the benefits and the potential problems. It is also good to know something about the changes occurring in our culture and lives.
I once did a post about how different cultures wear more or less gold and how that affects the distribution of lost gold jewelry on Florida beaches. Some groups wear more gold than others, and some groups tend to wear a higher karat gold than others. I've talked about that in the past. You can tell a lot about who visits a beach, by what type of jewelry you find there.
Many different types of knowledge are relevant to and can help you with treasure hunting, and treasure hunting can help you learn about a lot of different types of things. I guess that is what keeps it so interesting for me.
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Next week on the Treasure Coast we're supposed to have a gradual increase to a surf of up to five feet.
Again, Happy Mother's Day.
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
