rpm 4.10<\/a> includes “~” as a special versioning character, just like dpkg has for ages. Holds a special place in my heart since I did the original patch<\/a> for dpkg a bit over 11 years ago now. (And looking at that bug history now, it appears it was accepted for my birthday a year later, awww). “ls” from coreutils also supports it (they borrowed the code from dpkg, based on a copyright disclaimer request I’ve finally gotten around to replying to), though I don’t think it’s actually documented.<\/li>\n Read a couple of interesting takes on the Facebook IPO: one from a “blue-collar hedge fund manager”<\/a> (yeah, riiight), who blamed NASDAQ for not handling trades properly on opening day, then essentially forcing traders to sell their stock immediately to be compensated for trades not executed properly; and one from Nanex via ZeroHedge<\/a> with an animation showing that NASDAQ was not actually making a market in Facebook stock for an extended period (claiming offers to buy for $43 and offers to sell for $42.99, but not executing them and clearing them out), screwing up the other exchanges they connect to and the high-frequency algorithmic traders that use them. To me, Google’s reverse-auction IPO that tried to ensure there wasn’t a day-one stock price “pop” just seems better all the time…<\/li>\n Like I needed more reasons not to be impressed by US politics<\/a>.<\/li>\n SpaceX<\/a> has been doing a pretty amazing demo: correctly handled launch abort, quick turn around on fix; successful launch; successful delivery of payload to the ISS. Get it back down again, and they’ve really got something. Also impressive: per Wikipedia at least, “As of May 2012, SpaceX has operated on total funding of approximately one billion dollars in its first ten years of operation”, 80% of which has come from payments by customers (“progress payments on long-term launch contracts and development contracts”). That is, about the same amount as what Facebook paid for Instagram and its 13 employees…<\/li>\n Via Andrew Pollock’s g+ feed, Leap Motion<\/a> looks nifty.<\/li>\n I rode down to linux.conf.au in Ballarat this year — about 5000 kilometres of awesomeness. Here’s a photo from the way I took back, that I call “Hay, Hell and Booligal”<\/a>:<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/lh4.googleusercontent.com\/-r3--jJApT2o\/T8Oxv_PFagI\/AAAAAAAAFCY\/DxdMIHIFrQY\/s400\/2012-01-24_08-50-48_47.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"