To Friends Who may be Using Gizmodo, LifeHacker and other services...

This story came through on slashdot on the weekend, stating that Gawker  had been compromised.  Gizmodo and LifeHacker are among the compromised password sets (as are Kotaku and io9):

'Our user databases do indeed appear to have been compromised. The passwords were encrypted. But simple ones may be vulnerable to a brute-force attack. You should change the password on Gawker (GED/commenting system) and on any other sites on which you've used the same passwords. Out of an abundance of caution, you should also change your company email password and any passwords that may have appeared in your email messages. We're deeply embarrassed by this breach. We should not be in the position of relying on the goodwill of the hackers who identified the weakness in our systems.'

If you don't understand this story, perhaps it doesn't apply to you. So don't worry about it. I know of at least one reader who does use these services.