Mozilla pushed out a new update of Firefox on Thursday that fixes ten security vulnerabilities, three of which are deemed critical.

The trio of critical patches for Firefox 2.0.0.12 variously fix vulnerabilities including web browsing history and forward navigation stealing bugs; a privilege escalation flaw that creates a possible mechanism to run cross site scripting exploits and also poses a malware injection risk; and a memory corruption bug in the popular open source browser.

The hacker known as “Ben Heck,” whose previous mods include handheld versions of the PlayStation 2, the Sega Genesis, and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), has turned his attention to the Xbox 360, with envy-inducing results. Too bad you can’t buy it in stores.

Ben Heck’s (a.k.a. Benjamin Heckendorn) Xbox 360 Elite laptop packs everything you’d need to get your Xbox fix on the road, including a full keyboard, the spinning Ring of Light, an IR port and sync button for 360 wireless controllers—even a built-in Web cam.

Ask.com has quietly launched a news page called “BigNews” that aggregates top news stories from a variety of sites ranging from The New York Times to small blogs.

The company, whose parent company InterActiveCorp is having troubles of its own over plans to split off its different brands, enters a crowded field with more established news aggregators like Yahoo, Microsoft, and even Google, as well as sites like Digg and Topix.

Ask.com says the news page stories are dynamically generated based on freshness, source authority, social media references, article content, and multimedia availability. You can use a source filter to search for stories based on geographic region and track stories via the site or RSS.

With 4G and WiMax services on the horizon, a new digital wireless era is approaching–but the era of another form of cordless communications is soon to come to a close: namely, analog cellular phone service, which will cease nationally on February 18.

Who cares? Very few, carriers say. But owners of older cell phones, people who are in areas not well served by digital, and owners of home alarm systems should all care.

The shutdown–approved by the Federal Communications Commission–is called the “analog sunset” because those so-called AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone System) networks, which were first deployed in the 1980s and brought cellular service to millions of Americans, will finally disappear.