Notification about available package upgrades

I'm sure most people have one of these, but here is my yet-another email-me-when-I-need-to-upgrade-something crontab entry, after I found cron-apt too complex:

0 */8 * * *     apt-get -qq update && apt-get -dqq dist-upgrade && apt-get -qq --simulate dist-upgrade | grep ^Inst

If your root mail goes to some place you read (probably a good idea), you will get a list of packages it wants to upgrade. When running stable, this will also effectively send you alerts about security updates.