I'm on the free option, so it's mostly inconvenience at the moment. I'm not on the list, as I'd expect - all I'm running is port forwarding on 443 only to a centos box.

I'll see how it pans out over the next 24 hours or so before I do anything.

BT in the UK.

My IP address changes every week or so, and I'm not rebooting my modem.

Me too, in the UK. Figured it was a random glitch until I read this.

I use no-ip to provide an address back to a home server running ZoneMinder for a couple of security cameras. So as it stands I can't access my security system. Great. I went to no-ip because my ISP doesn't offer fixed IP addresses and for no good reason changes my IP address every few days. I also have it on a self-signed SSL cert, and if I access it via IP I have to add another exception to the browser every time it changes.

If it wasn't for the SSL aspect, I'd have a script on my home box identify the external IP address and email me when it changes.

Absolutely. I also went through uni when fees were paid and grants were available (late 80s/early 90s). Student loans were only just coming in when I left.

The big difference then was that it was possible to get a good job with "just" A levels. Even professions such as accountancy were possible without a degree, and many of my equally capable peers left after college or sixth form and have done just as well as I have. It wasn't a default decision for me, but I'm glad I went mostly for the social side and first experience of living alone in a relatively safe and easy environment. I don't think it particularly helped my career.

The company I work for now only takes on graduates for all but the most trivial roles, but when I started we took on people with any level of formal education who showed the right ability and aptitude. I don't think the quality of applicants has improved. Companies that used to look for degrees twenty years ago now looks for applicants with masters or higher. It is an escalation, and I don't think it does anyone any favours.

That industry has gone the way of the IT industry...

It used to be very lucrative, great hourly rates were available to the best in the field. Now there's been an influx of eastern europeans, and customers have discovered they can order cheaper options from the far east...

The other thing that's changed is the way people drive on motorways. When I was first driving, back in the early 90s, you could sit on the motorway at 80mph (for those outside the UK, that's a little above the legal limit of 70) and be overtaken by a steady stream of ton-up drivers. The outside lane was a hazard and you'd need a huge gap to overtake and still have frustrated drivers getting right up your arse.

It still happens to an extent, but it does seem that the average speed has dropped. I see far fewer cars driving at 90 and up. OK, that's partly due to the increase in speed cameras, but I reckon fuel economy plays a part. There are more people seemingly content to sit below the limit, at about 60, and that was very much a rarity 20 years ago outside of the elderly cloth cap brigade.

I pretty much use email. It's virtually instant, arrives on all of my devices simultaneously, and flexible enough to handle longer messages with attachments when the need arises. SMS is handy for communicating with dumbphone users, but otherwise email is the answer.

As of Kitkat, at least on the Nexus 5, hangout is the default SMS application and does this if you're not careful. It can try to start the conversation via a hangout if the contact has a gmail account, which is kind of useless if they don't have an android phone and you want to use SMS as most people do - to contact them *right now* on their phone.

You have to remember to select their phone number specifically, then it will send an SMS. It will also always reply in kind - get a text it will always reply by text.

To my mind that's where Apple went wrong with the new Mac Pro. Looks pretty, no internal expansion. So you have this nice object on your desk - with a bunch of trailing wires to your storage, optical drive, card readers etc...

If it had an internal optical drive, multiformat card reader (SD and CF at least) and room for at least one or two extra drives (hot swappable would be nice), it would be a great machine. I'd imagine more people would find that useful than the dual graphics cards. I know I'd prefer it all in one box, with just one external drive, or array (USB would do) for backups. And of course I could build a PC to the spec that meets my needs for a lot less.

I do actually use a Mac, and prefer OSX to Windows, but the hardware choices are sooo limited.

The sidebar is one of the most important features for me. I filter various emails to skip my inbox, so I like to see an unread count against the labels to know when I've got mail I might want to look at. I like to keep the inbox to the more important stuff, as that's the one I sync with my phone.

I like the way the current gmail uses space as well - not too much whitespace. Email is a tool I use constantly - I don't need it to look good, I need it to be functional and have as much information as possible available at a glance. Site designs that are OK for casual browsing are not necessarily appropriate for real work and power users.

Gmail was the first web interface that was good enough for me to replace a desktop client for PC use. I'd rather not go back, but that interface will have me switching, either back to a mail client or to outlook.com

I get the point, but I'm surprised at the poor battery life on the Nexus 4. I have a Nexus 5, and with very little use I get four days out of it on a full charge. That's syncing one email account and a few things like weather widgets. It's the screen that kills the battery, but with moderate use I still get a good couple of days. GPS and Bluetooth off, obviously, and it's on wifi at home and work.

I used to get two days out of it when I had Facebook installed. Then they came out with an update that wanted too many extra permissions, so I binned it. Lo and behold, battery life almost doubled...

It's not the amount. It's the ideas - getting things done. I've known programmers who can work a week on something and produce a thousand lines of convoluted code full of bugs. Someone else can come in, see the problem differently, and knock out a solution in a few dozen lines - which may have the odd bug to be ironed out, but simply due to the number of lines of code will have an order of magnitude fewer.

The ones that are 10 times more productive simply have a better grasp of which algorithm to use, as well as an in depth working knowledge of the libraries available and how to find new ones. For example, I've seen guys reinvent big wheels badly in Perl, when there are well established modules on CPAN that do the same thing and are going to be far better tested and more reliable.

The difference between average and good is in how quickly you get a reliable working system that meets the requirements. In that respect, I truly believe there is at least an order of magnitude between OK and good, let alone great, programmers.

Exactly, it's a nuisance. On my phone even a 4 digit pin is a pain - I just want to swipe and start using it. I do put up with a pin to prevent casual nosiness if I leave it on my desk, but otherwise I wouldn't bother.

I care about security, but I also care about the balance between that and convenience. It's risk management - the likelihood of losing my phone is low, the stuff on there isn't that sensitive, so I opt mostly for convenience.