In the large field of startup send-up and parody, a new entry, Unicorn Startup Simulator feels like a rare breed, in that it's so bizarre and fun. The goal of the game, naturally, is to reach a $1 billion valuation in one year before going public — the unicorn threshold — achieved, as in life, by making simple, binary decisions that become increasingly weird.

Questions like "Should you spring for a catering service?" quickly devolve into "should you have a tech reporter who bashed your company killed?" In between are a seemingly endless array of ways to fail and die penniless and ruined, usually in your mother's basement, or driving for Uber again, or taunted in other such ways by the game. It's tough to know what to do when you're bootstrapping a company, so you'll be forgiven if you blow your $1.06 billion valuation in the game because you chose "say no to drugs" over "pass that dutchie" at an office celebration of some new milestone.

Of course — prepare yourself for a little bit of startup-ception — the Unicorn Startup Simulator is, at least in part, a bit of marketing from an Estonian online time-tracking startup called Toggl.

"We created [the simulator] with the people behind the Toggl time tracking app during a team retreat in the fine town of North Berwick, Scotland," explains Mart Virkus, a marketing lead at Toggl who also draws comics about video games, technology, and culture at Arcade Rage. If you play his game enough times, you'll even notice that he gives himself a very meta-nod within the game:

"For us, it was a way to do something a little different from our daily jobs," Virkus writes, describing the game as "like the Farming Simulator for the Millennial generation."

Even if it's impossible to lose your real-life funding just by playing, you definitely stand to blow a whole afternoon on this game. My central confusion in trying to win — which I couldn't, but SFist's Jay Barmann did — has been this: Should you do what's morally right to succeed, or does the game have a darker take on Silicon Valley, whereby you'll succeed by moving fast, breaking things, and generally cutting corners? Our initial testing indicates you need to be pretty morally flexible, not bend over backwards for customers, and do what you can to keep your employees happy, within reason, unless they want to work remotely from Bangkok. You should play and find out.

Related: Nerd Alert: First Trailer For 'Silicon Valley' Season 4

A little privacy, please?#PokemonGO pic.twitter.com/7eqPmstl90

— ENTJ Probs (@entj_probs) July 10, 2016

Now that the world — and your social media feed — has been overtaken with Pokemon Go news, it should probably be noted that while the app is the number one free download in the Apple App Store, iPhone users should beware of a major privacy issue relating to your Google accounts. As Ars Technica reports, the iOS version of the app doesn't ask permission before giving itself full account access to your Google contacts, and it can also view and send e-mail, view and delete Google Drive documents, and more. The Android version doesn't seem to have the same issue, but if you want to check and see, and revoke these permissions, go to this security page while logged into your Google/Gmail account.

Niantic Inc., creators of the app and originally an internal Google startup called Niantic Labs, has not commented on the issue thus far, and it's likely to be addressed in an upcoming release — though current users are going to want to go and hit the remove button like so:

TechCrunch credits RedOwl's Adam Reeve for pointing out the flaw shortly after the app's launch, and it's curious that it hasn't been addressed — though to be fair, Niantic has a ton of other fires to put out following the augmented-reality game's positively crazy popularity over the past five days. As Wired UK reports, Android users are subject to a malicious version of the app that allows backdoors that could give hackers total control over a user's phone, plus the app is causing major battery drain for many users, and it's been subject to server outages because (likely Google Cloud) servers can't handle the volume — prompting taunts from Amazon Web Services, their competitor, as Business Insider reports.

As for the iOS security problem, Google itself warns users that such "full account access" should only be granted to only the most trusted applications.

To wit:

When you grant full account access, the application can see and modify nearly all information in your Google Account (but it can’t change your password, delete your account, or pay with Google Wallet on your behalf).

This “Full account access” privilege should only be granted to applications you fully trust, and which are installed on your personal computer, phone, or tablet.

So, in other words, if you really can't stop playing and "catching them all" before the next release, you may want to at least check up on your Google account right now.

Update: Gawker's Black Bag blog has another piece detailing the concerning language you agree to when you download the app, which includes phrases like, "We may disclose any information about you (or your authorized child) that is in our possession or control to government or law enforcement officials or private parties."

Related: SFPD Forced To Issue Pokémon Go Safety Tips

It's official: The Zynga headquarters is now worth more than Zynga. We learned in February that the maker of Farmville intended to sell its Design District office building for was what assumed to be at least double the 2012 purchasing price of $228 million. Well, according to a post this week from Halting Problem, several sources have confirmed the value of the property to be right around $540 million — in other words, more than Zynga itself.

"As of close of market [earlier this week], the company’s market value was around $2 billion," reads the piece. "However, due to its reserves of approximately $1.5 billion of cash on hand, analysts estimate that Zynga is actually worth around $500 million."

The company has struggled over the past few years with repeated incidents of mass layoffs, regrettable acquisitions, and poor stock performance.

With company stock trading at $2.55, well below its 2011 IPO of $10 a share, it looks like the company realized its smartest move might be to capitalize on San Francisco's high-priced commercial real estate market even as it struggles amid possible industry bubble conditions to determine a sustainable business model for itself. And unless they have a few more buildings laying around they can flip, it seems they still might have a ways to go to figure that out.

Previously: Selling The Farmville: Zynga To Offload SF Headquarters

Cards Against Humanity — the profane person's Apples To Apples — is an already ubiquitous game in the Bay, readily found in dive bars or on back patios. If somehow you've never played, it's pretty simple: a fill-in-the-blank or question card is offered, and players submit a card from their hand to complete it or answer the question. And it's fun. Usually, winning submissions are politically incorrect, insensitive, or totally unintuitive. If you play, you know that the response "Hitler" wins a lot of hands.

Further, there's no shortage of expansion packs and variations out there, since the game gets stale when answers become repetitive. You can even download and print the game, all free and legal. The cheeky company behind Cards Against Humanity even landed some press for selling an actual bullshit version of the game at one point, boxes arriving last Black Friday chock-full of genuine bull feces.

But now, at long last, local gamesman Josh Barrientes wants to give the Bay Area the Cards Against Humanity version it so clearly deserves, as Live105 reports. Here's hoping he's got some good cards in his hand, since it could be super funny if done well. Unfortunately for the project, but really quite naturally, Kickstarter does have some copyright policies and such. Perhaps this one will fly under the radar, or could be seen as parody....which is doubtful, so we'll have to see.

Barrientes' Kickstarter — called Cards Against the Bay — hopes to rack up $1,500, by March 26th, and then the game is on. If you throw in $7 or more, you receive a pack of 25 question cards and 75 response cards. Frankly, I could do with more, so I'll suggest a few. "The line is so long at that new _____ place called ______." might be a good one. Or how about, "That Airbnb sucked, it was full of _______." Last, an "It's like Uber, but for _______" card is pretty much obligatory.

Previously: Video: Ladies of 'Downton Abbey' Play Cards Against Humanity

(By Daisy Barringer)

After a very short week, the (1-2) 49ers face off against division rivals the (1-2) Rams tonight in St. Louis. The short week + traveling across the country + the fact that the 49ers have been playing like crap + the fact that for some reason we consistently struggle against the Rams + injuries doesn’t bode well for the 49ers. But we’re there. And we have to play the game. So let’s put my frustrated attitude aside and check out what we have in store.

The Good

We can’t suck any worse than we have for the past two weeks? Does that count as good? It’s going to have to.

Frank Gore. I have no idea why the run game was totally abandoned in the second half of last week’s game, especially since Gore rushed for 105 yards in the first half alone, but it was and it’d better not be this week if we have any chance of winning because I don’t know if anyone noticed but our passing game is meh.

Our Defense. I’m kind of just putting this here because “The Good” is feeling really empty. I mean, they’re good or whatever, although they seriously need to step up the run defense. Crucial.

Sam Bradford. Bradford is under a lot of pressure to perform tonight. His last three games have been against teams with horrible pass defenses. Guess who actually has a good pass defense? That’s right: The Niners. Let’s hope he chokes.

The Bad

Injuries and absences. Aldon Smith’s in rehab. Nnamdi Asomugha and Patrick Willis both didn’t practice and it’s not looking like they’ll play. Vernon Davis was limited in practice, but who knows.

Colin Kaepernick. Kap has been playing like a QB who’s never started an entire NFL season. And that’s probably because he IS a QB who’s never started for 16 games. But ugh. I don’t know what’s going on with him (not a lot of options for receivers is one thing), but he needs to snap out of it and complete his passes. Like, now.

Receiving Corps. Surprise! Our opponents are onto the fact that Anquan Boldin can bring down the ball. So they’re covering him super well. The Niners need to get other receivers in the mix so that Kaepernick has more than one target.

Penalities. Just STOP getting them, Niners. There! Problem solved. (They should hire me.) Luckily, the Rams have also been getting a lot of penalties, so if we do continue to make stupid mistakes, hopefully it will all come out in the wash.

Morale. I mean, I don’t know how the 49ers feel, but it just seems like everyone’s really down in the dumps about how this team has been playing. (Rightfully so.) No one expected us to be 1-2 right now. OKAY NO ONE EXCEPT ME. I actually PREDICTED the Niners would be 1-2 right now. God, sometimes I hate when I’m right.

The Short Week. Never a good thing. The coaching staff didn’t have a lot of time to do a helluva lot of work, but I assume they just didn’t sleep, which is fine. They can sleep when they’re dead or when we win. Whichever.

The Rest Of It

Now is the time to turn this ship around. (Is that even a saying?) The 49ers have the talent. They have the coaching staff. Almost NOTHING has changed from last year. They 100% can do this. Many of us are frustrated, yes, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have faith.

The Rams aren’t that good. They’ve only won one game as well and had the 49ers played Arizona, the Falcons and Dallas, I think we’d be 3-0. They’re under pressure to win, but no one really believes they’re going to the playoffs. The Niners, however, still have a legitimate shot at making a run for it.

And Finally….

Sorry to beat a dead horse (probably not the best usage of that expression), but I just wanted to thank everyone who has reached out publicly and privately to ask how I’m doing and show their support after I was kicked and punched by a 49ers fan while leaving the game last week.

The update is that the police mislead me and never filed charges, despite the fact that I asked them to and that after taking my information they said “You probably won’t be called to court.” I’ve called the Bayview police department several times, but despite promises that my messages are getting the sergeant, I’ve not received a call back. I also reached out to my account manager at the 49ers who informed me that Candlestick security was in touch with the SFPD, but I’ve heard nothing back from them either. (I emailed yesterday and told her I’m moving on from the incident, so I no longer expect to hear anything.)

I was very shaken up on Sunday. On Monday and Tuesday I was exhausted, emotionally drained, and in a bit of pain. Yesterday I woke up feeling much more like myself and made the decision to just let the whole thing go. I wish the SFPD hadn’t lied to me. I wish someone had at least reached out from the Niners to ask how I was doing. I wish that Candlestick had better security and that fan safety wasn’t such a serious issue. Personally though, it’s not worth the fight. I could try, but we all know nothing would happen. It’s more important to me to move forward and be happy than to dwell on it.

Also, I want to acknowledge how terrible and guilt-ridden I’ve been over the fact that after the girl shoulder-checked me that I pushed her off of me. I regret that enormously and I know that had I just walked away, I could have avoided the entire situation. Unfortunately, instinct won over intellect. But it’s not something I’m proud of at all and I wish I’d reacted differently.

Lastly, I want to thank the media outlets - and especially SFist - who took the story seriously and helped draw attention to the ongoing problem that is fan safety at Candlestick. It’s a real problem. I love football so much. All I want is for people to be able to go to the game with their friends and family and have a good time.

ANYWAY… sorry to get all serious there for a second. Back to the important stuff! The 49ers face off against the Rams tonight. We can totally do this despite the injuries and short week and the rest of it. I believe.

Watch San Francisco at ST. LOUIS tonight at 5:25 p.m. PDT on the NFL Network.

Finally, Palo Alto and Menlo Park can finally admit how much they hate each other and nothing lies between Muir Woods and the Richmond but the merest sliver of bridge. In this version of the RISK gameboard, the Bay Area is a battleground for more than just apartment seekers and blog commenters.

If you don't already know, RISK is an interminable game of strategic conquest wherein dice rolls dictate cavalry movements and territorites are conquered and reconquered ad nauseum until everyone gets too drunk to continue. It's fun!

This particular gameboard comes courtesy of an outfit called Havoc Games, which designed it along with 14 others as part of a Kickstarter project that would provide custom gameboards to strategy fans eager to 'think globally, act locally.' And who doesn't want to dominate the entire Bay Area, uniting the East, North and South Bay under a beneficent dictatorship to declare every day free ice cream day and eliminate sadness, sidewalk urine and parking tickets?

All you need achieve your dreams is to conquer and destroy every single one of your enemies (oh, and a fully licensed copy of the game RISK® by Hasbro, the not-at-all-litigious games manufacturer that has already conquered the world). You can get a jumpstart by backing the Kickstarter, which also gives you the option of a custom board made to your specifications for a mere $500 contribution.

[Kickstarter]

It was a bloody Monday for Zynga, the San Francisco-based gaming company with the friendly dog mascot. Yesterday the company announced massive layoffs which cut 18% of Zynga's workforce and totalled 520 employees. And some employees had to find out via Facebook. Brutal.

The ax fell especially hard on Zynga's satellite offices. The company has reportedly shuttered its Los Angeles, Dallas and New York offices--the latter home to OMGPOP, the company behind the mobile app Draw Something (our app memory is foggy, but even we remember when everyone and their mom was playing it). Zynga gutted OMGPOP yesterday after acquiring it for $180 million last year.

Some employees heard the bad news the hard way:

San Francisco's offices were not left unscathed, as the layoffs extended across pretty much every department in the company. Mars Bar played host to a gaggle of newly laid-off worked yesterday afternoon, as they did the only thing logical after getting the news: drinking heavily and commiserating over their severance envelopes.

Meanwhile, NY Post had a rare moment of brilliance with this headline.

[Mashable]
[Buzzfeed]

This year Atari's Breakout celebrates its 37th birthday, In honor, Google has added a nifty feature to Google Images. Do this now: go to Google Images, search "Atari Breakout." If you're too lazy, allow us to Google that for you. You're welcome.

You didn't plan on working today anyway, right?

Breakout began as an arcade game developed by Atari, Inc in April of 1976. Prior to other incarnations, such as Super Breakout, etc., the original shows eight rows of bricks, with each two rows a different color. The original color order, from the bottom up, was yellow, green, orange and red. You then used a single ball to destroy the layers with a paddle without losing the ball. While it's no Ms. Pac Man or Pong, Breakout does hold a spot in the heart of many a gamer.

Hotel Zetta welcomed their first guests today during their soft opening. Both the lobby and second-floor mezzanine offer an interactive thrill -- specifically, a Plinko wall inspired by the greatest game on The Price is Right. Guests get the chance to win stuff with the Plinko wall as they drop a ball from the mezzanine level through a series of random pegs before landing at number on the lobby level below. You know how it works.

Each number will contain a different prize, ranging from a spa treatment to a free stay, VIP upgrade, and more. The grand opening of the hotel is slated for April 1. And the restaurant, The Cavalier, is set to open in August 2013.

Below, canine sculpture in the hotel lobby. Arf.

Hotel Zetta: 55 5th Street (at Mission), S.F.

A recent article from San Francisco tech website Ubergizmo asks if a new game, Mass Effect 3, will hurt traditional moral values. Why? Because the latest installment of the RPG shooter will allow players to opt for same-sex love interests. Via Twitter, Mass Effect 3 executive producer Casey Hudson sent out the following message: “Happy to confirm #ME3 supports wider options for love interests incl. same-sex for m&f chars, reactive to how you interact w/them in-game."

In part of a post that went live on Monday, Ubergizmo's Edwin Kee wrote the following response:

This takes after the footsteps where BioWare’s Dragon Age titles left off, letting players do the same thing. Will Mass Effect [3] result in further erosion of “traditional moral values” as you can play the role of a female Shepard who will hit it big with Kelly when the game ends, although it wasn’t as explicit as what Mass Effect 3 will be. As a parent, what is your take on this?

Sure, he has the right to ask that since gay stuff tends toward the hot topic. Then again, the same could be asked of the game's interracial love or interspecies options. (That is, if they even exist. Does that even exist? We don't know. The last videogame we played involved an animated Italian stereotype chasing mushrooms and stars.) Why not mention that as well, Kee? Or, better yet, ask how having something as natural as gay relationships compares to bloodshed in a game aimed at the teen market.

Minutes after the post went live, the publisher's added the following disclaimer: "We realize that this post can be controversial, and while we let our writers express their opinion, they remain their [sic] personal view on the subject."

Ubergizmo also named the article's accompanying image file "mass-effect-homo." Charming.

Go on, readers. Take Ubergizmo's bait. What do you think of same-sex love in violent video games?

Update: Post has been removed. "If one of our writers wants to share his or her opinion about morality and other topics in life, that person can do it on their own blog, instead of using our site as a platform," writes Ubergizmo's publisher. "We have notified Edwin Kee and asked that he stays within the editorial objective of this site in future posts. We apologize to anyone who was offended by the content of this post."

[Thanks for the tip, SFist reader Gary Robertson.]

First, elderly rock 'n' roller Bon Jovi gives Steve Jobs grief over allegedly killing the craft of album listening - which, pipe down, Jon Bon - now customers are complaining that their rotten kids were amassing hundreds of dollars worth of charges due to the iPhone and iPad's 15-minute password-free timer for the App Store.

AP reports:

The issue was that after a user entered his or her iTunes password on a device, the device didn't prompt for the password again for 15 minutes. Any purchases, whether in the iTunes store or inside kid-friendly games such as "The Smurf's Village," went through without a new password prompt.

This meant that parents who handed over their iPhones or iPads to their kids were sometimes shocked by large purchases of "Smurfberries" and other virtual bling.

And just like that, the Smurfberry Crunch ad jingle is stuck in our head. In berry red and smurfy blue! Here, allow us to share the earworm with you. You're welcome.

Anyway, according to a December 2010 Washington Post article, one parent accused Capcom, the maker of "Smurfberries," of preying on children. IN response, Apple announced this week changes with the iOS 4.3 software update, which will have a separate password for the App Store and iTunes, and a separate one for in-app purchases.

The parents AP talked to have since "received refunds from Apple for the inadvertent purchases."

[KTVU]