The End of the Water Cooler Era: Office Vacancies at 80s Levels

It's official, folks: the office apocalypse is nigh! Moody's Analytics reports that office vacancies are at levels last seen during the '80s savings and loan crisis. We knew it was coming, but now it's here. Moody's director of economic research, Thomas LaSalvia, warns that we're entering turbulent times for the office sector.

Remote work may have driven people out of the office, but companies didn't give up on their office spaces right away. And now, property owners are feeling the squeeze with rising vacancies and higher interest rates on their floating rate debt. Even fancy Class A+ properties with better amenities are taking over Class A buildings, causing landlords like Brookfield Asset Management and Columbia Property Trust to default on their debts.

So, what's a CEO to do? Cut costs, of course! Instead of laying off workers during the labour shortage, companies are looking to downsize their real estate. "The low-hanging fruit is definitely that office space," says LaSalvia. Looks like it's time to start packing up those desks and saying goodbye to the water cooler gossip.

Roblox cracks down on ads aimed at kids under 13 - good news for parents, bad news for advertisers trying to sell candy to 6-year-olds

Roblox, the virtual gaming hub that has become a playground for kids all over the world, has decided to crack down on advertisements aimed at children under 13. This is a bummer for advertisers who have been setting up virtual stores, branded experiences, and in-game billboards on the platform. But let's face it, it's a good thing for the kids who just want to play without being bombarded with ads for the latest toy or candy.

Roblox is taking this issue seriously and has come up with a set of rules that define advertising as any content within its metaverse world designed to promote a product or service outside of Roblox. This means that even branded activations, which have become increasingly popular with brands, will be subject to the standards.

Half of Roblox's 58.5-million-strong user base is under the age of 13, which has presented special challenges for creating ad experiences that are gated by age. But with these new standards, Roblox hopes to protect its young users from "stealth marketing" and put the right policies in place to ensure their safety.

In other news, we're still waiting for Roblox to crack down on those annoying players who keep stealing our virtual furniture.

Skip Reviews and Testimonials: Find the Happiest College in the US with Instagram Selfies

Resume.io has come up with a new way to rank colleges in the US based on the happiness of students. Instead of relying on boring reviews and testimonials, they used an AI facial recognition tool to analyze Instagram selfies geotagged at different universities and determine the proportion of happy-looking faces.

According to their study, the happiest college in the US is Texas Christian University, where 76.47% of Instagram selfies are happy. So if you're looking for a college where everyone is grinning from ear to ear, Texas is the place to be.

Second on the list is New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which scored 62.87% on the happiness scale. And in third place is the University of Iowa, where around 62% of the faces photographed were found to be smiley.

So if you want to find the happiest college in the US, just look for the school with the most smiling faces on Instagram. Crazy idea, right?