UPDATE: May 20, 2021, 3:14 p.m. CDT Slack appears to be back up and running. According to a Slack update, users who are still having issues should "fully quit your Slack app or browser using Command + Q (Mac) or Ctrl + Q (Windows/Linux), and then reopen it." Slack decided to start the weekend early. And really, can you blame it? According to Downdetector, the popular workplace messaging app started acting up around 1:17 p.m. ET.  (Full disclosure: Downdetector is owned by Mashable's parent company, J2 Global.) User reports indicate Slack is having problems since 1:17 PM EDThttps://t.co ..read more

The workplace messaging app Slack, which seeks to "reinvent work," did an about face Wednesday after users complained a new feature took a step toward reinventing harassment. The latest addition to Slack Connect, announced Wednesday, aimed to "replace email outside your company" by letting users send direct messages to any Slack user, anywhere. There was just one, rather large problem with this lofty goal: Many Slack users didn't want to receive DMs from anyone, anywhere, and feared the new service included the potential for abuse.  After some consideration, it seems Slack agreed.   ..read more

UPDATE: Jan. 4, 2021, 12:25 p.m. EST Slack was down for several hours but appears to be back for some users. Slack said, "Not today, 2021." After a long, exhausting 2020, we're starting the first Monday of the year off with a little gift from the internet gods: Slack is down. If your job involves computers or you're working from home, there's a good chance your company uses Slack's chatrooms to facilitate communication among colleagues. Slack is the platform for chatting, sharing thoughts, tweets, and checking in with coworkers. It's a daily staple among workplaces, so when it's down, not to ..read more

Nobody asked for a Cole Haan x Slack sneaker collaboration, but we got one, and the shoes fully look like something from a swag bag at a tech conference. People on the internet are not so impressed with the collab, but I have to get something off my chest: The Slack shoes are actually kind of cute. turn your gaze upon the wretched Slack shoe and mute in despair pic.twitter.com/kawkUE16zy — alex (@alex_abads) October 7, 2020 According to Cole Haan, this partnership is an effort to “#WriteNewRules for how the world works,” which is quite a heavy responsibility for a shoe line. I imagine the ..read more

If your Slack is anything like mine right now, it's almost impossible to use.  Some messages have been delayed by several minutes. Entire threads and channels aren't loading. Slack's official status page noted, "Some users may be unable to connect to Slack."  We're still seeing performance issues and apologise for the disruption caused. We will share more news once we have it https://t.co/7hFKxXV7Dd — Slack Status (@SlackStatus) October 5, 2020 For those who can at least access Slack, the company is looking into the "degraded performance" on the desktop and mobile apps, and the ..read more

Slack and its scores of desktop app users just dodged a major bullet.  The communications tool relied upon by journalists, tech workers, and D&D fans alike disclosed on Friday a "critical" vulnerability — now fixed — that would have let hackers run wild on users' computers. Slack's internal security team didn't even find the bug; rather, it was a third-party security researched who reported it, through the bug bounty platform HackerOne in January. Notably, the exploit allowed for something known as "remote code execution," which is just as bad as it sounds. Before Slack fixed it, an ..read more

Slack is accusing Microsoft of breaking antitrust law in the European Union by bundling its competing business chat service, Microsoft Teams, with Office, and is calling on European regulators to investigate. “Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant Office productivity suite, force-installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers,” San Francisco-based Slack said in a statement.  Slack's accusation echoes the antitrust case Microsoft faced two decades ago in the US over bundling Internet Explorer with the Wi ..read more

Slack holds the keys to its customers' kingdoms, and has long been aware how problematic that is. Twitter, it seems, may have been considerably less aware.  Wednesday's massive Twitter hack forced the company to lock out its own users, temporarily, in a desperately bid to stop the ongoing bleeding. And while it has yet to be confirmed, the New York Times reported Friday that the hacker was was able to access to Twitter internal systems after first gaining entry into Twitter's Slack account — where, allegedly, he found unspecified "Twitter credentials" that "gave him access to the company ..read more

All it took was a pandemic, but the maker of a widely used remote-work tool has finally come to the startling conclusion that permanent remote work might actually be possible.  San Francisco-based Slack announced Friday that, contrary to its office-first culture, going forward it will allow employees the option to work remotely forever. That's right, the company that for many defines modern-day remote work is only catching up to the actual reality of that now.  "Slack is going to become a much more distributed company," explained Robby Kwok, Slack's senior vice president of people ..read more

Whatever your neighborhood once looked like on a spring day, there's a good chance it hasn't looked that way for quite some time now, as the coronavirus has altered the landscape of communities around the country (and world). As such, it's more important than ever to find ways to safely support your neighbors and community.  Within a given neighborhood, the coronavirus is likely hitting residents in different ways: Older people might be grappling with loneliness, working parents might be buckling under a near-impossible workload, while some neighbors might be grieving the loss of a loved ..read more