Tag: Insights

Looking Up Crash Reports In OS X

If you find yourself–like me–in the situation that your Mac has crashed and you want to retrieve the crash reports (some call them logs 😉 )? Well, there are basically two ways.

You can look them up with the “Console” tool (find it in 

/Applications/Utilities/Console

  or with Spotlight). Open the “System Diagnostic Reports” section on the left and find an entry similar to 

Kernel_<date>_<your_pc_name>.panic

  at the top.

You can also find these reports as text files under 

/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports

with the same names. OS X will open them with the Console tool per default.

Cheers. 😀

“I’m a chicken.”

– Fun?!? … Pinkie Pie, you’re a genius!
+ No, I’m not. I’m a chicken. B‘gawk!

This piece from the “Luna Eclipsed” episode cracked me up. 😀 Sometimes you have to wonder how people come up with these dialogs. In this instance it fit so perfectly … especially with the build-up towards that point … genius!

It even allows to link to my favorite Wikipedia article. 😉

 

Heavy Twitterers among South Korean Military and Spys

1.2 million tweets were sent out by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to smear opposition leaders, and 23 million tweets were spread by the Defense Ministry’s Cyberwarfare Command to tip the scale in favor of current President Park Geun-hye.

Source: Global Voices Online

Oh, no … Who could’ve known this was even possible?!? :/

Update 2015-02-11:
The former chief of the NIS was sentenced to three years of prison for trying to manipulate the 2012 presidential election.

Intriguing Serious Games

I don’t know how people come up with this, but I’ve come two very interesting games that pick up topics you wouldn’t immediately think of. I haven’t played them yet, but I’m intrigued by the concepts.

Papers, Please! puts you into the shoes of an immigration officer at an airport of a fictional country. You have to examine visa applicants and finally granting or denying them entry. You earn money from how many people you correctly admit or reject. And you need the money to pay for your own expenses: rent, food, heating, medicine. Screw up and you won’t be able to afford them.
This puts you into a difficult spot. Your performance doesn’t only affect the live of the person you’re examining, but yours too. You learn that (surprisingly)  You’re swayed between concern, duty, diligence, suspicion, courtesy and cynicism … and you get why border are no laughing matter. :/ I think the review on Arstechnica captures the feeling well.

In Blackbar is a different twist on puzzle games. You get to read mail between two fictional people with parts blacked out. Your task is to reconstruct the blacked-out parts. It’s as simple as that. You get drawn in into the story between the two and you need this context to deduce some of the parts. It feels creepy. :/ TUAW has a nice review of it.