While time will tell the extent of this, I have been recommending the following to my friends (copied verbatim from https://www.facebook.com/stuar... ).

As a precaution, here are some prudent tips:
1. Log into your Apple Account at https://appleid.apple.com/ and enable two-factor authentication if you haven't already (see https://support.apple.com/en-a...) .
2. While you are there, if you have not changed your password in a while, consider doing that too (https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201355).
3. As the threats include the threat of remotely wiping devices, you can disable this on each of your iCloud connected devices. See Macworld's good article on how to do this for each device type: http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-... . Note that if you do this, you will also be unable to use the Find my iPhone/iPad/Mac feature. Until more details come out, personally I feel this is acceptable given the risk.
4. When you are logged in at https://appleid.apple.com/acco..., check to ensure there are no devices you do not recognise under 'Devices'.
5. For the next few weeks, periodically do a local backup using iTunes of your iDevices. See https://support.apple.com/en-a... and click on 'Use iTunes'. I recommend you also set a backup password, this encrypts the backup and stores additional information making a future restore easier.
6. As always, BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP. For your Mac, I would already hope you have backups in place. If not, my favourite is CrashPlan http://crashplan.com/ and I have used it for years/put many friends onto it also.
Time will tell what will happen with these accounts, it never hurts to take a few prudent steps until the community at large knows more.

You know... for anyone that used this site... I have little sympathy to be honest... HOWEVER, something they should remember is... if they pay up once... another 100 people might come knocking at their door demanding money to "keep the details secret" too... So really they shouldn't bother lest another person come knocking on their door demanding the same. Sorry, once it is out on the net... that is it... game over!

Thanks to @DarthNull on Twitter we now have confirmation that this goes back at least as far as iOS 6 devices (hence these devices are still vulnerable as no patch will be released). For the full details of @DarthNull's findings please see http://technicalnotebook.com/software-bugs/apple-ios-bug-allowing-unlimited-incorrect-pin-attempts/

The biggest issue I see with Google is that they like to tease the waters with these services, things like the recently retired Google Reader, they will put it out there, decide that they are not getting enough interest and then retire it. Google needs to look at what they do and keep doing it well, not trying to target every aspect of the market. Personally I would FAR prefer to put my data into Evernote, as I know they will hang around, Google Keep... meh we will see how long until it goes. The things google innovate on, THEY hang around, the things that Google follow on... tend to get flushed after a while. Just my 2c.

Hi Adumonit,
Do you specifically have a need to host it locally? I live in Australia and like you server hosting costs here are *prohibitive*. Hence I do all my hosting in the United States where you can rent servers from any number of providers for $60USD a month and up, they manage all the hardware and stuff for you (and depending on how much you are willing to pay a month) can even manage the software for you as well (to a certain degree).

The large benefit of this is that you wouldn't have a massive initial outlay for hardware costs and the great thing is you can start out small and if you need to in 12 months time move to larger hardware to support the growth.

As I said this only depends on if you actually have a specific business need to host locally.

As far as how to install all those, I personally am a fan of cPanel, in theory it might be overkill for what you are looking for but you can usually get it on rented dedicated servers and it will happily handle the install of apache, php, (python can be added easily) and myqsl. The massive benefit here would be it will also manage *upgrades* to those packages minimising admin work while you are starting up.

When you kick off and have enough resources to warrant it then you could move to a custom managed/tuned install of each so that you can optimise them.

Just my thoughts. Stuart

Interestingly it looks like (for once) us Aussies were the first to get this, about 6(ish) months ago Foxtel started broadcasting via streaming channels to the XBox 360. I will admit it is not a full featured service but it is a really good start. I will be curious to see how it plays out overseas to see if you get full featured (such as pausing, recording etc) as of course there are technical limitations that have to be overcome there. Stuart

Hi All, I may have figured out a way to *recover* from the crash after being very frustrated finding the GPU crashing every morning. http://slashdot.org/submission/1505352/Possible-workaround-for-Macbook-2011-Issues Curious if this works for others Stuart