Apple today patched 92 vulnerabilities, a third of them critical, in a record update to its Leopard and Snow Leopard operating systems. Security Update 2010-002 plugged 92 holes in the client and server editions of Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X 10.6, breaking a record that has stood since March 2008. The update dwarfed any released last year, when Apple’s largest patched 67 vulnerabilities. “The sheer number, it’s almost so daunting that you don’t even want to look,” said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security. Today’s security roll-up fixed flaws in 42 different applications or operating system components in Mac OS X, from AppKit and Application Firewall to unzip and X11, the Mac’s version of the X Window System. Eighteen of the vulnerabilities were specific to the older Leopard operating system, while 29 were specific to Snow Leopard. The remaining 45 affected both, which are the only editions that Apple currently supports. Users running Leopard will patch 63 vulnerabilities, while Snow Leopard users face a total of 74 flaws.

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AMD announced Monday that its 8 and 12 core x86 Opteron 6000 Series “Magny-Cours” CPUs have been deployed to take over the 2P and value 4P server market. The latter processor doubles the number of cores in the previous-generation 6-core Opteron server chip, coughing up twice the processing level while providing an 88-percent increase in integer performance and a 119-percent increase in floating point performance. “As AMD has done before, we are again redefining the server market based on current customer requirements,” said Patrick Patla, vice president and general manager, Server and Embedded Divisions, AMD. “The AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform signals a new era of server value, significantly disrupts today’s server economics and provides the performance-per-watt, value and consistency customers demand for their real-world data center workloads.”

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So, GF100 is here, and we’ve been playing new DX11 games on it for a straight week, working ourselves through games such as Metro 2033 and Bad Company 2 and Aliens vs. Predator. Our first impression with the GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470 is that nothing really wowed us in our gaming experiences with the cards. The one thing that stood out in our minds was, “We’ve already been here before,” the Radeon HD 5870 and Radeon HD 5850 have been giving us this same experience since last year. But is not all that bleak when you analyze it. We see no reason to purchase a GeForce GTX 470. It provides no gameplay advantages compared to the competition, and will actually end up costing you more power and dollars for the exact same performance you can get with the Radeon HD 5850. Factor in the power consumption, and it doesn’t seem worth it. If you have an HD 5850, stick with it, the GTX 470 is not an upgrade. If you are contemplating a great performing graphics card, for a decent price, the HD 5850 is still the best choice. Overall, GF100 hasn’t exactly delivered. I think we were all hoping it would provide a substantial gameplay improvement over the Radeon HD 5870 and Radeon HD 5850. Competition is good, and we would like to see it. Unfortunately, our experiences weren’t as positive as we had wanted. When you break it all down to cost, power and performance, the GTX 480 and GTX 470 don’t measure up.

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OpenGL is one of those things that has made the iPhone one of the strongest competitors for the mobile gaming market. The platform offers developers a robust way to program 3D applications, especially games. And with the support of companies like AMD, the interface will continue to benefit from utilizing some of the best processors on the planet. AMD has announced today that they are happy to be the first to fully support the recently released OpenGL 4.0. AMD is supporting the 3D interface with its ATI Catalyst OpenGL 4.0 preview driver, which enables all OpenGL 4.0 functionality. The driver will be supported by the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards, including the HD 5400, HD 5500, HD 5600, and HD 5700. All of the new features, are supported right out of the gate on these graphics cards, which is made possible by the OpenGL software team.

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Looks for the Avatar effect

KOREAN DISPLAY MAKER LG Electronics has become the latest company to show its hand in 3D TVs, competing against its rivals Sony, Panasonic and Samsung. According to reports, the company said it has ambitious plans to sell one million 3D television sets this year and hopes to take a quarter of the emerging 3D TV market. It unveiled 47-inch and 55-inch 3D TVs that are back-lit by LEDs and are reported to be hitting shelves in late April. Each TV will also carry two pairs of special glasses needed to see the 3D picture. LG has only around a 10 per cent share in the LCD TV market, trailing companies like Samsung, and appears to be looking at 3D TVs as an area for growth potential. But it has a battle on its hands competing with other big firms that have the same idea. Fellow South Korean company Samsung already started its big push on 3D TVs earlier in the year, while Japanese companies like Sony and Panasonic also have their own targets.

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The first day of the annual Pwn2Own contest in which security researchers can win cash and hardware if they successfully compromise machines using zero-day exploits is finished. Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7, Firefox 3 on Windows 7, Safari 4 on Mac OS X 10.6, and iPhone OS 3 were all compromised during the competition. Google’s Chrome was the only browser left standing—and in fact, was completely untested. None of the researchers at the competition even tried to attack Chrome. So far, little is known about the successful exploits. Until vendors have been informed of the flaws and those flaws have been patched, details will not be made public.

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Gates plans to invest in a partnership between Toshiba and next-generation nuclear company TerraPower.

After releasing fireflies onto his audience at this year’s TED conference, Bill Gates announced his plans to fund a viable, next-generation nuclear technology called a traveling-wave reactor. Now Gates has announced an exploration between TerraPower, a traveling-wave reactor nuclear company he largely funds, and Toshiba Corporation, a leader in the commercial nuclear power business. Traveling-wave reactors have been discussed for decades as a cheaper and safer alternative to typical fission reactors, but until now the supercomputers required to make such technology possible were simply not affordable. It is thus no coincidence that Gates has found the perfect match for both his humanitarian and technological aims.

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