A story on Rock, Paper, Shotgun talks with Azzer, who has more to say on the topic of playing SimCity offline after his a video from this week showing the urban planning sequel playing offline after a bit of hacking to satisfy its reliance on contacting EA's servers to run. He speaks of the "absolute ease" with which the game could be made to simulate the behavior of entire regions on a local machine, which meshes with their previous report quoting an anonymous alleged Maxis engineer making similar comments. Thanks Joao.

The Steam Community website has details on a new patch that's now automatically available for Supreme Commander 2 to update Gas Powered Games real-time strategy sequel with a bunch of changes and fixes. GPG was purchased last month, and this is the first update to the game in the past couple of years, though whether these two details are related is not clear.

• World of Warcraft Patch 5.2 Hotfixes: March 15.

• Nintendo Wii U sales are underwhelming, fails to outperform monthly Xbox 360 or PS3 sales from last 7 years.
• Xbox Live's Major Nelson » Show 470- Pre-Pax and The Walking Dead- Survival Instinct.

• Microsoft Surface tablets sold worse than expected.

Thanks Ant.

• Verizon, Comcast Working on 'Magical' Video Services.
• 'The Thing' Redialed: how a BBS changed the art world and came back from the dead. Thanks Boing Boing.
• Change.org petition for Google Reader exceeds 100,000 signatures.
• Google Begins Blocking Third-Party Jabber Invites.
• Suddenlink Saw Four Fiber Lines Cut This Week.
• CenturyLink Confirms Usage Caps.

• 15 years ago, Apple killed the Twentieth Anniversary Mac.

Thanks Ant.

• Security will get worse before it gets better. Thanks Linux Security.
• 3G and 4G USB modems are a security threat, researcher says.
• Internet security writer DDOS'd, visited by armed police SWAT team who'd been hoaxed.
• Hackers can cause traffic jams by manipulating real-time traffic data, researcher says.
• Raspberry Pi As Hardware Backdoor.

• SimCity on Ars Technica.
• Tomb Raider on ActionTrip.

• FUNC MS-3 Laser Gaming Mouse on TweakTown.
• NETGEAR Centria WNDR4700 Wireless Storage Router on Hardware Heaven.
• Prolimatech Megahalems Red Series CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets.
• Sharkoon REX8 Value Chassis on eTeknix.
• StarTech 2.5-Inch to USB 3.0 Encrypted Hard Drive on Legit Reviews.
• Toshiba MK01GRRB-R 2.5-inch 6Gb-s SAS 15K RPM Enterprise RAID on TweakTown.

• Game Giveaway of the Day - Sky Taxi 3: The Movie. Thanks Ant…

With St. Paddy's falling on a Sunday, it seems pretty obvious that this will be a pretty raucous Saturday. Here's hoping everyone can wear their green without turning green. Please be careful of drunk drivers, and for goodness sake, don't be one yourself. But have a great time. Erin go Braugh!

Green Links:	Thanks Ant and Acleacius.
Play:	Deadswitch 2.
Links:	Whedon: No "Firefly" Kickstarter. Gorram.
Science:	Cellphones as a Modern Irritant. Thanks j.c.f. Neil deGrasse Tyson on Photons and Relativity.
Media:	Tomb Raider: Reboot - Part 1, Part 2, and Making of.