If you have an account with HealthCare.gov, you can expect to change your password the next time you log in. And you can thank Heartbleed for it.

According to the website, all HeathCare.gov users will be prompted to change their passwords the next time they log into the site. According to the site, "HealthCare.gov uses many layers of protections to secure your information," and there's no sign that any Healthcare.gov user information has been compromised, so this is mainly a precautionary measure.

The Associated Press notes that the US Government is reviewing al of its sites to see if they're vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug, so it's possible that users of other government sites may have to change their passwords in the not-too-distant future.

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Let?s face it: A lot has changed in the past few years. Smartphones! 3D printers! Drones! Face computers! Self-driving cars! It almost feels as though we?re living in the future. According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, Americans expect this rapid pace of change to continue over the next 50 years.

And while most of those surveyed think all this new tech will be a good thing, there are a few things the populace is wary about.

The Pew survey found that 56 percent of respondents ?are optimistic that coming technological and scientific changes will make life in the future better,? while 30 percent have a more dystopian view of the not-too-distant future.

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A dastardly conspiracy? Historical guess-who? Shadowy government agency?

Don't worry! Malachi Rector is on the case. Who's Malachi Rector? Why, he's a world-renowned antiques appraiser of course?a career I can only assume he was saddled with the same day his parents gave him that awful name.

You know, before his mother was eaten by a lion.

You thought I was joking, didn't you? Admit it.

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Users of Google Glass will get to meet and compare their techie headgear this weekend at a spot where appearance is everything.

On Saturday in Los Angeles, the Internet company is holding a 3.6-mile run from its offices in Venice to the Santa Monica Pier and back. They?d better hope it?s a cloudy day: Instead of sunglasses, runners will be sporting Google?s face-mounted computer, Glass. (Though Google, conveniently, is now selling clip-ons.)

Anyone who owns one of the US$1,500 devices can participate. They?ll even get to try out fitness software on Glass made by Strava, which makes a GPS tracker and performance analytics software for athletes. That way they can see how fast they ran while trying to be discreet taking celebrity photos.

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Tech workers suing over an alleged no-poaching agreement among Silicon Valley firms are fighting an attempt by defendants to ban evidence that might portray Steve Jobs as a bad guy.

The case centers on alleged secret agreements struck among companies including Apple, Google and Adobe that they would not try to hire each others? workers. The tech workers say that drove down their wages and restricted their mobility.

In the pretrial period, plaintiffs referred to materials such as outside blog posts referencing Jobs and Walter Isaacson?s best-selling biography of the former Apple chief. Isaacson?s biography reveals both a ?good Steve? and a ?bad Steve.? People, in Jobs? eye, were either ?enlightened? or ?an asshole,? Isaacson writes in the book.

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Can plastic materials morph into computers? A research breakthrough published this week brings such a possibility closer to reality.

Researchers are looking at the possibility of making low-power, flexible and inexpensive computers out of plastic materials. Plastic is not normally a good conductive material. However, researchers said this week that they have solved a problem related to reading data.

The research, which involved converting electricity from magnetic film to optics so data could be read through plastic material, was conducted by researchers at the University of Iowa and New York University. A paper on the research was published in this week?s Nature Communications journal.

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The continuing NatWest debacle has highlighted the IT systems risks faced by British banks, springing from a lack of investment in back-office staff and a reluctance to abandon legacy systems

(ZDNet UK - IT Strategy)

The Nexus 7 is the first tablet that Google will sell directly to the public, starting at £159 for the quad-core device running the next version of Android, Jelly Bean

(ZDNet UK - Mobile Devices)