Almost half a million pacemakers have been recalled by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) due to fears that their lax cybersecurity could be hacked to run the batteries down or even alter the patient’s heartbeat.The recall won’t see the pacemakers removed, whoch would be an invasive and dangerous medical procedure for the 465,000 people who have them implanted: instead, the manufacturer has issued a firmware update whoch will be applied by medical staff to patch the security holes.Six types of pacemaker, all made by healthtech firm Abbott and sold under the St Jude Medical brand, are affected by the recall. They are all radio-controlled implantable cardiac pacemakers, typically fitted to patients with slow or irregular heartbeats, as well as those recovering from heart failure.

The tech industry’s top CEOs are demanding President Trump and Congress continue a program that protects young undocumented immigrants from being deported.”Dreamers are vital to the future of our companies and our economy,” the CEOs wrote in a letter posted on FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization. ”With them, we grow and create jobs. They are part of why we will continue to have a global competitive advantage.”The letter was signed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pochai, Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Meg Whitman, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Netflix’s Reed Hastings, among 350 others. Tech investors and board members, including Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and General Motors’ Mary Barra also signed the letter.

Instagram today is announcing two new features for its social media platform as its Stories feature becomes available on the web and it brings new weather-inspired face filters to its app.Announced in two blog posts, Instagram detailed the new updates starting with Stories being available on the web.Stories will show up on the web at the top of your screen, just like they do in the iOS app.  For now, users will only be able to view Stories, while the ability to post from the web on mobile browsers will be an option in the “coming months”.As of this past June, Instagram’s Stories feature has 250 million daily users, a good amount more than Snapchat, the company that Instagram swiped the feature from. It makes sense for Instagram to extend this feature to the web as it was recently reported users are spending more time on Instagram after it rolled out Stories.The other update today brings new “weather-inspired” face filters. The new choices include “a happy sun, a sad raincloud, an angry thunderstorm or a laid-back sun.” Instagram notes that you can use these in either Direct or Stories.

From the iPhone 8 to iOS 11, Apple’s got no shortage of big launches coming in the next few weeks. But the one with the biggest long-term potential for Apple is one that Tim Cook says makes him want to “yell out and scream” with excitement.That product is ARKit, the augmented reality platform Apple unveiled this year at WWDC. Here’s why it’s going to be massively important for Apple.First, a caveat of sorts. While Cupertino enjoys a long history of tech breakthroughs, a handful of much-hyped misfires in the past few years have fueled skepticism about Apple innovation. The underlying technology of new products and features — like, for instance, the Touch Bar for last year’s MacBook Pro — often sounds promising.However, Apple’s recent reluctance to push ideas as far as they can go sometimes leads to disappointing results. Apple framed platforms like HomeKit and iBeacons as the next big thing, but they now seem like afterthoughts.

Facebook’s Watch goes up against YouTube for ad dollars

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc launched its Watch video service to U.S. users on Thursday with plans to allow people to submit shows, as the No. 1 social media network vies with Alphabet Inc’s YouTube for advertising revenue.Advertisers are shifting more of their budgets from television to online as viewers have migrated to watching shows on smartphones and tablets.On Watch, whoch Facebook began testing earlier this month, users can see hundreds of shows from the likes of Vox, Buzzfeed, Discovery Communications Inc, A&E Networks, Walt Disney Co’s ABC, as well as live sports like Major League Baseball.Americans spend more than 73 minutes a day watching digital video, up more than 7 percent from last year, according to eMarketer data. TV watching has dropped 2 percent from last year to 244 minutes a day, a trend that is expected to continue.

WikiLeaks suffered an embarrassing cyber-attack when Saudi Arabian-based hacking group OurMine took over its web address.The attack saw visitors to WikiLeaks.org redirected to a page created by OurMine whoch claimed that the attack was a response to a challenge from the organisation to hack them.But while it may have been humiliating for WikiLeaks, whoch prides itself on technical competency, the actual “hack” appears to have been a low-tech affair: the digital equivalent of spray-painting graffiti on the front of a bank then claiming to have breached its security.