Today I read a great post on Travelrants called Ten things that annoy me about booking holidays online. Darren made a list of 10 things that annoy him while booking holidays online. It’s clearly the kind of feedback/information people that work for Online Travel Agencies or Hotel Portals would love to gather from their visitors. That’s [...]

The family of Dreasjon "Sean" Reed, who was fatally shot by Indianapolis police, remember him as an energetic young man just getting his start in life

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TidalWave Productions is releasing Buttigieg and Bloomberg comic books to sit alongside its Warren biography.

The goal is to provide financial services to billions of people around the world, including those who lack access to banking.

• Facebook has been in negotiations for months to lease over 700,000 square feet at the Farley Building on Manhattan's West Side. 
• Office leasing activity in the city has plummeted, giving the blockbuster deal even more importance as a sign of life in a suddenly lethargic market.
• The coronavirus has spurred a deep downturn in the economy that is already being felt in the city's commercial real-estate market, prompting a big slowdown in leasing activity.  
• The rapid expansion of tech in recent years has propelled the city's office market. Real estate execs say that Facebook's big deal is a key barometer. 
• The crisis also raises questions whether tenants will ever occupy office space the same way as companies and their workforces around the world grow familiar with remote work. 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Leasing activity in New York City's multi-billion-dollar commercial office market has dropped precipitously as the coronavirus has battered the market and raised questions of when — and even if — tenants can return to the workplace in a post-Covid world.

Amid the growing concerns the crisis will smother what had been robust demand for office space, eyes in the city's real estate industry have turned to a pending blockbuster deal on the West Side that could offer a signal of confidence to the market.

Facebook is in talks to take over 700,000 square feet of space in the Farley Building, a block-long property across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station.

"If that deal happens, then this market will be just fine," said Peter Riguardi, the New York area chairman and president of JLL. "If the deal happens but it's renegotiated, it will be fine, but it will be a trend that every tenant can follow. And if it doesn't happen, I would be very concerned about the market."

Read More: Inside the drama over control of the iconic Chrysler Building: A real-estate tycoon and a prestigious college are renegotiating a critical $150 million deal.

Facebook's NYC real-estate footprint

Last year, Facebook signed on for 1.5 million square feet in the Hudson Yards mega-development just west of the Farley Building, taking space in three new office towers at the project.

For months the $600 billion Silicon Valley-based social media giant has been in negotiations for even more space at the nearby Farley Building, whose interior landlord Vornado Realty Trust is redeveloping to include newly built office and retail space.

Vornado had originally expected to complete the deal with Facebook in early March, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. The talks have continued on as the virus pandemic has brought commerce and social life to a virtual halt. The source expected the lease, which will commit Facebook to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in rent for the space over the life of the lease, to soon be completed.

In a conference call with investors and analysts on Tuesday to discuss Vornado's first-quarter earnings, the company's CEO Steve Roth also hinted that the Facebook deal was still on track.

"There's another large tenant that has been rumored to be that we've been in dialogue with," Roth said, not directly naming the company. "That conversation is going forward aggressively and hopefully maybe even almost complete."

Rapid growth in Big Tech leasing before coronavirus

Recent real-estate decisions by Facebook and other tech companies have worried real-estate executives that they may reconsider their footprint after years of dramatic growth. Facebook on Thursday revealed that the bulk of its over 40,000-person workforce will be asked to work remotely for the remainder of the year, a timeline that appears to show the company is using caution in returning to its footprint.

Read More: Neiman Marcus just filed for bankruptcy, and it could mark a major blow to NYC's glitzy Hudson Yards — one of the most expensive mega-malls in US history. Here's why.

Real-estate executives have expressed concern that tenants may become accustomed to offloading a portion or even the bulk of their workforce to a remote-working model, leading them to drastically reduce their office commitments.

At a minimum, the economic upheaval has appeared to spur a newfound sense of caution in tech companies that have grown rapidly in recent years. Alphabet called off negotiations to expand its San Francisco offices by over 2 million square feet in recent weeks, according to a report from The Information.  

Tech has been a big driver of demand for office space

In recent years the tech industry had become one of the most voracious takers of space in the city, helping to push up commercial rents and spur the construction of new office space.

In 2019, tech firms accounted for 24.5% of the 31.6 million square feet of leasing activity in Manhattan, eclipsing the financial industry as the city's biggest space-taking sector for the first time, according to data from the real estate services and brokerage firm CBRE.

In 2010 tech leasing comprised just 4% of the 24.2 million square feet that was leased in the Manhattan market that year, CBRE said.

"Nothing has buoyed the confidence of landlords more in recent years than tech tenants," said Sacha Zarba, a leasing executive at CBRE who specializes in working with tech firms. "It didn't matter where your building was. If it was attractive to tech, you would stand a good chance to lease your space. If that industry retrenches a bit, it removes a big driver of demand."

The Manhattan office market has slowed rapidly in recent weeks as the virus crisis has battered the economy and shut down daily life.

About 844,000 square feet of space was leased in Manhattan in April, according to CBRE, 64% lower than the five-year monthly average. In the first four months of the year, nearly seven million square feet was leased, a decline of 30% for the same period a year ago. 

So far, however, there are signs that tech continues to snap up space.

After scuttling plans to develop a 25,000 person second headquarters space in Long Island City last year, Amazon purchased 424 Fifth Avenue, a former flagship department store for Lord & Taylor, for nearly $1 billion in March. That property totals about 660,000 square feet. Late last year, before the pandemic hit U.S. shores but had flared in China, Amazon also leased 335,000 square feet at 410 Tenth Avenue.

The commitments of major tech companies absorb millions of square feet in the city, but they also help fuel a larger ecosystem of tenants that occupies an even larger footprint. That means that a decrease in the real estate of just a few big tech players could be multiplied across the market as smaller players in the sector follow suit.

"Those big tech firms do a fantastic job of training and credentialing tech talent on the city," said Matt Harrigan, a co-founder of Company, a space incubator at 335 Madison Avenue that provides offices and community for both startups and more established tech firms. "Google and Facebook spin off talent who start or join other tech ventures that take space. That's what's so important about having the large presence of those companies here."

Have a tip? Contact Daniel Geiger at dgeiger@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (646) 352-2884, or Twitter DM at @dangeiger79. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

SEE ALSO: What to expect when you're back in the office: 7 real-estate experts break down what the transition will look like, and why the workplace may never be the same

SEE ALSO: Major tenants are delaying big leases in NYC as they re-think their office space needs for the post-coronavirus world

SEE ALSO: As WeWork and flex-space rivals stumble, 18 million square feet of space in NYC is at risk. Here's what that means for the real-estate market.

SEE ALSO: BI Prime Edit in Viking Neiman Marcus just filed for bankruptcy, and it could mark a major blow to NYC's glitzy Hudson Yards — one of the most expensive mega-malls in US history. Here's why.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Facebook is taking a harder line on misinformation related to coronavirus than it has on other health topics in the past.
• This decision may increase the pressure on the company to act more decisively against other forms of harmful falsehoods that spread on its social networks.
• Facebook is banning events that promote flouting lockdown protests, and is removing the conspiracy theory video "Plandemic."
• But false claims that vaccines are dangerous still proliferate on Facebook — even though they contribute to the deaths of children.

Amid the pandemic, Facebook is taking a harder line on misinformation than it has in the past. That decision may come back to haunt it.

As coronavirus has wreaked havoc across the globe, forcing lockdowns and disrupting economies, false information and hoaxes have spread like wildfire on social media. Miracle cures, intentional disinformation about government policies, and wild claims that Bill Gates orchestrated the entire health crisis abound.

In the past, Facebook has been heavily criticised for failing to take action to stop its platform being used to facilitate the spread of misinformation. To be sure, coronavirus falsehoods are still easily found on Facebook — but the company has taken more decisive action than in previous years:

• For starters, Facebook is now displaying warning messages to people who have shared false information about COVID-19. They're imperfect — Stat reported that they may be too vague in their wording to have a major impact — but it's a step further than Facebook has taken on misinformation in the past.
• The company is also taking down event pages for events that reject mainstream science on coronavirus by calling on people to flout lockdown rules.
• And it is banning "Plandemic," a conspiratorial video about coronavirus that has been going viral on social media and contains numerous falsehoods.

But Facebook's actions to combat COVID-19 misinformation may backfire — in the sense that it has the potential to dramatically increase pressure on the company to take stronger action against other forms of misinformation.

The company has long struggled with how to handle fake news and hoaxes; historically, its approach is not to delete them, but to try to artificially stifle their reach via algorithmic tweaks. Despite this, pseudoscience, anti-government conspiracy theories, and other falsehoods still abound on the social network.

Facebook has now demonstrated that it is willing to take more decisive action on misinformation, when the stakes are high enough. Its critics may subsequently ask why it is so reticent to combat the issue when it causes harm in other areas — particularly around other medical misinformation.

One expected defence for Facebook? That it is focused on taking down content that causes "imminent harm," and while COVID-19 misinformation falls into that category, lots of other sorts of falsehoods don't.

However, using "imminence" as the barometer of acceptability is dubious: Vaccine denialism directly results in the deaths of babies and children. That this harm isn't "imminent" doesn't make it any less dangerous — but, for now, such material is freely posted on Facebook.

Far-right conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, and more recent, Qanon, have also spread on Facebook — stoking baseless fears of shadowy cabals secretly controlling the government. These theories don't intrinsically incite harm, but have been linked to multiple acts of violence, from a Pizzagate believer firing his weapon in a pizza parlour to the Qanon-linked killing of a Gambino crime boss. (Earlier this week, Facebook did take down some popular QAnon pages — but for breaking its rules on fake profiles, rather than disinformation.)

And Facebook is still full of groups rallying against 5G technology, making evidence-free claims about its health effects (and now, sometimes linking it to coronavirus in a messy web). These posts exist on a continuum, with believers at the extreme end attempting to burn down radio towers and assault technicians; Facebook does take down such incitements to violence, but the more general fearmongering that can act as a gateway to more extreme action remains.

This week, Facebook announced the first 20 members of its Oversight Board — a "Supreme Court"-style entity that will review reports from users make rulings as to what objectionable content is and isn't allowed on Facebook and Instagram, with — in theory — the power to overrule the company. It remains to be seen whether its decisions may affect the company's approach for misinformation, and it still needs to appoint the rest of its members and get up and running.

For now, limits remain in place as to what Facebook will countenance in its fight against coronavirus-specific misinformation.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would immediately take down posts advertising dangerous false cures to COVID-19, like drinking bleach. It is "obviously going to create imminent harm," he said in March. "That is just in a completely different class of content than the back-and-forth accusations a candidate might make in an election."

But in April, President Donald Trump suggested that people might try injecting a "disinfectant" as a cure, which both has the potential to be extremely harmful, and will not cure coronavirus.

Facebook is not taking down video of his comments.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (robaeprice@protonmail.com), standard email (rprice@businessinsider.com), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.

SEE ALSO: Facebook announced the first 20 members of its oversight board that will decide what controversial content is allowed on Facebook and Instagram

Join the conversation about this story »

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Low-key no longer: The presidential candidate and his actress girlfriend appeared together at public events over the holiday weekend.

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A recent article from Edutopia suggested that we’re rushing young children through childhood.

We hear a lot about diversity and inclusion these days, often as it relates to books for young readers. Just as publishing for children and teens has evolved over the years, so has adults’ perception of youth and what is appropriate for them.

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Optimized for Kubernetes, Quarkus is designed to help you create Java applications that are cloud first, container native, and serverless capable. With this cookbook, authors Alex Soto Bueno and Jason Porter from Red Hat provide detailed solutions for installing, interacting with, and using Quarkus in the development and production of microservices. The recipes in this book show mid-level to senior developers familiar with Java enterprise application development how to get started with Quarkus quickly.

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In April, the company yanked 1,887 misleading accounts, pages and groups tied to eight influencer networks building fake engagement.

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(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau) University of Illinois classics professor Clara Bosak-Schroeder writes about how the ancient Greeks thought about natural resources and how it is relevant to responding to climate change today.

Research Event

Event participants

Silkie Carlo, Director, Big Brother Watch
Professor David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, University of California, Irvine, School of Law  
Professor Lorna McGregor, Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the ESRC, Human Rights, Big Data and Technology Project
James Williams, Oxford Internet Institute
Chair: Harriet Moynihan, Associate Fellow, International Law Programme, Chatham House

In this week's UK Tech Weekly Podcast host Matt Egan is joined by PC Advisor staff writer Chris Minasians chats about Facebook's new like buttons, the team has contracted smartphone fever from the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona and finally, acting editor of Macworld UK David Price, discusses Donald Trump boycotting Apple.  

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week host Matt Egan is rejoined by Macworld.co.uk acting editor David Price to chat about Apple's latest Macbook announcements. Then online editor at ComputerworldUK Christina Mercer jumps in to give a break down of Google's fight with the EU over antitrust infringements (13:00). Finally, ex-dating app user Scott Carey, online editor at Techworld.com gives a state of the union on dating apps, from Tinder to Bumble to Happn, if they are good for society and which one is set to corner the market (27:00).  

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week host Matt Egan is joined by regular podder David Price, acting editor of Macworld.co.uk, to discuss Apple's not so awesome results and stalling iPhone sales. Then online editor Scott Carey jumps in to discuss Facebook's far better results and how it has come to dominate the mobile advertising market (15:00) Finally, producer Chris comes out from behind the glass to discuss Nintendo's secretive NX console and having to wait for the new Zelda game (28:00).  

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Matt Egan is in the presenter chair this week as he chats about Black Friday and the changing face of online retail with acting editor at Macworld UK, David Price. Then online editor at Techworld.com Scott Carey talks Facebook and its recent issues with fake news and Chinese censorship (12:00). Finally, online editor at Computerworld UK Tamlin Magee brings us up to date with the Government's Autumn Statement and what it means for the technology sector (26:00).  

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Episode 73 sees David Price lead Scott Carey, Miriam Harris and Henry Burrell into a critique of Mark Zuckerberg's decision to go into a VR tour of Puerto Rico. Disaster tourism at its finest/worst.

Henry then discusses the new Kindle Oasis, which for the firs time is waterproof - but very expensive and quietly released.

Finally we all chip in to ask why Blade Runner 2049 is quite so overtly sexist in its portrayal of women. There be spoilers.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David Price is back to host this week, with Christina Mercer breaking down what all the fuss about KRACK is and why you should take precautions with your Wi-Fi. Henry Burrell reviewed the Google Pixel 2 this week so gives us his thoughts on the device. You might want to avoid the larger XL though. We then discuss Facebook's idea to counterattack cyberbullying. Charlotte Jee recently spoke with the company to see what they are doing, but will it work?  

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Join host Henry Burrell in hot as hell London town to bring you 40 minutes of air conditioned tech chat.

Tamlin Magee talks us through the murky ways IBM helped the Third Reich in the Thirties and Forties with data collection and asks what responsibility tech companies have today to ensure their work does not contribute to evil.

Charlotte Jee then analyses Facebook's stock price slump, asking why it happened and does it really affect the company? The team muses on Facebook as a whole and the fascinating if polarising Zuckerberg.

Finally Macworld's David Price chats about the new MacBook Pros and how Apple has already fixed the major flaw in the high-end model - but why did they ship this way? Is Apple less concerned with quality control these days?

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We were all surprised this week with the weirdly excellent trailer for Detective Pikachu with Ryan Reynolds voicing the yellow pocket scamp. Dom Preston drops in to tell us how Nintendo is getting into film and we laugh about the Bob Hoskins Mario film. We also talk about the moving new Tetris game (yes, it's made people cry).

Scott Carey then lays out the latest Facebook expose and asks if Zuck and Sheryl Sandberg are ruling the company properly - should it be actively siding politically and morally against misuses of the platform? Or is it too big for them to even control?

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1 May 2007 , Number 8

Corruption and Misuse of Public Office,
Colin Nicholls Qc, Tim Daniel, Martin Polaine and John Hatchard, Oxford University Press.

1 May 2007 , Number 8

Corruption and Misuse of Public Office,
Colin Nicholls Qc, Tim Daniel, Martin Polaine and John Hatchard, Oxford University Press.

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