Technology

Slack has unveiled a range of changes to its team chat app aimed at creating a simpler and more intuitive user experience, as it targets a wider range of users. This includes a message &compose& button, easier navigation and customizable sidebars.

Early adopters of Slack tended to be tech professionals working in IT or software development. But as use of Slack has boomed in the six years since its launch — with 12 million daily active users, including at many large enterprise businesses — the types of workers relying on the app for collaborating with colleagues has evolved. After tech professionals, the fastest growing use cases are now in sales, marketing, and customer support, said Slack.

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NASA and SpaceX issued a media accreditation invitation on Wednesday for their Demonstration Mission 2 (aka Demo-2) commercial crew launch & the first in the commercial crew program that will carry actual astronauts to space. The invite includes the current proposed timeframe for the mission, listed as no &no earlier than mid-to-late May.&

Reports from earlier in the year had pegged the launch window for May, with the possibility that SpaceX and NASA could move that to as early as April, or as late as June, depending on the preparedness of the spacecraft and crew. SpaceX was reportedly early on readying the Crew Dragon spacecraft that would be flying the mission, but NASA also changed the mission parameters to include a longer stay at the International Space Station for the crew going up on the demo mission, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

This will be the first time ever that astronauts fly aboard a SpaceX spacecraft, and the first crewed mission for the commercial crew program, through which NASA is working with private company launch operators to return human spaceflight capabilities to American soil. All current astronaut transportation to and from the International Space Station is accomplished through a partnership with RussiaRoscosmos space agency, which flies crews using its Soyuz spacecraft.

So far, NASA and SpaceX haven&t seemed to be anticipating much of a change to the timing of their first crewed Dragon mission in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. This invitation from NASA is the most detailed confirmation yet that the mission is still on as of right now, and tracking towards a launch window that seems unchanged from plans prior to the implementation of strict social distancing and isolation measures as the COVID-19 epidemic flared across the U.S.

NASA recently moved all of its facilities to a ‘Stage 3& state of contingency operation, which means all employees are on mandatory telework unless they&re required to be physically present in office for mission-related activity. NASAAmes facility has been escalated to Stage 4, because of the ‘shelter-in-place& order in effect in the California county in which it resides, which means that the facility is closed and only telework is permitted.

In the invitation issued to media today, NASA says that it&proactively monitoring the coronavirus (COVID-19) situation as it evolves& and will &communicate any updates that may impact mission planing or media access, as they become available.& The agency is also taking extra precautions to protect the health of Hurley and Behnken, in addition to standard isolation procedures already in place to prevent them from getting sick ahead of a spaceflight mission.

Apple has announced both its new iPad Pro with 3D camera and a new Magic Keyboard-toting $999 model of its MacBook Air, introducing both new products with a pair of press releases, rather than the March event it was originally expected to hold.

The new iPad Pro

Applenew iPad Pro offers a whole bunch of new features, including a LiDAR scanner and — as expected — trackpad support in the form of the new backlit Magic Keyboard.

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The New York Stock Exchange will close its trading floor on Monday, March 23 and fully move to electronic trading, the exchangeoperator Intercontinental Exchange announced today.

The actual physical locations that will close are the NYSE equities trading floor in New York, the NYSE American Options trading floor in New York and the NYSE Arca Options trading floor in San Francisco.

The organization says it took this step as a precautionary step to protect the health of traders and employees on the floor. So far, two people who worked on the floor have tested positive for COVID-19, though they hadn&t been in the building this week, Stacey Cunningham, president of the New York Stock Exchange, said on CNBC today.

&NYSEtrading floors provide unique value to issuers and investors, but our markets are fully capable of operating in an all-electronic fashion to serve all participants, and we will proceed in that manner until we can re-open our trading floors to our members,& said Cunningham in the announcement. &While we are taking the precautionary step of closing the trading floors, we continue to firmly believe the markets should remain open and accessible to investors. All NYSE markets will continue to operate under normal trading hours despite the closure of the trading floors.&

This shouldn&t have any real influence on how the stock market functions. Outside of the United States, there are few traditional trading floors left and electronic trading already accounts for the vast majority of trades anyway. Nasdaq, too, is a fully electronic stock exchange. The NYSE does note that there are some floor broker order types that will be unavailable, though, and didn&t provide any guidance for when it expects to reopen the trading floor.

With world events overtaking the tech worldpreferences to meet for coffees and convene at events, Y Combinator skipped its famous two-day live Demo event and went for a radical experiment: no demos at all, but instead a long list of the nearly 200 startups in its Winter 2020 batch, with links to their sites and one-page slides. We&ve done the legwork for you in giving you a full rundown of who does what, and we have also come togetheron a group video chat on Zoom to talk through our takeaways of the format this year (missed it? herethe recording). Now, in no particular order, here is our shortlist of some of our overall favorites.

Staff at telecommunications giant Charter Communications are still having to work from corporate offices — against the advice from the federal government — despite at least one employee testing positive for coronavirus and other staff coming into contact with another confirmed case.

The phone and internet giant, which owns the Spectrum brand, has doubled down in the past week on its policy of disallowing its 15,000 office-based employees to work from home, prompting one engineer to quit over fears he would contract the illness.

Dozens of other Charter employees have contacted TechCrunch in the past few days with concerns about their current working conditions. Current government advice is to avoid gatherings of 10 people or more and for businesses to allow employees to work from home where possible.

The employees we spoke to said that while Charter has the means to allow staff to work from home, executives are reluctant to relax the policy. Charter chief executive Tom Rutledge said in an internal email to staff this week that employees are &more effective from the office.&

Charter employees say they are being forced to use their sick leave if they are exhibiting symptoms. Other companies, including AT-T and Verizon (which owns TechCrunch) are allowing staff to work from home.

Internal emails and correspondence sent by multiple Charter employees, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution from the company, show several staff in offices across the U.S. have shown symptoms and have been tested for the coronavirus strain, known as COVID-19.

An employee at a call center in Akron, Ohio also tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, according to another employee. The employee said that they fear others have been exposed to the virus because the infected employee had been forced to come into the office all week. Charter denied the claim.

Another email sent to staff in Charlotte, N.C., said an employee had self-isolated after reporting coronavirus symptoms. Itnot known if the employee has tested positive. Gizmodo reported Wednesday that an employee at one of Charteroffices in San Diego had undergone testing for COVID-19. The test results were also not released.

But staff at Charteroffice in New York City were told to still come into work, despite a positive COVID-19 case in the building. An email sent on Wednesday to some employees in the New York City office said a tenant on another floor, who used the same elevator banks as Charter employees, tested positive for COVID-19. The tenant was last in the building on March 5, according to a building notice seen by TechCrunch.

Some staff only found out about the positive result when&one of the good guys posted it in the elevator so others would see,& according to one employee.

Cameron Blanchard, a spokesperson for Charter, declined to comment on individual employee matters, and claimed the company was &following CDC guidelines,& and repeated previously made remarks that the company is &reviewing continuity plans daily& and &will adjust accordingly.&

The spokesperson also asked TechCrunch not to rely on &rumors& or &anonymous sources.& (The spokesperson declared this to be &off the record,& which requires both parties to agree to the terms in advance, but we are printing the reply as we were given no opportunity to reject.)

As it stands, there are more than 214,000 global cases of coronavirus, with some 7,700 reported cases in the United States.

Charter was not the only company this week accused of putting its staff at risk. This week, it was reported thatBest Buy was forced to reduce the number of customers in its stores to prevent the spread of the virus after staff spoke out.

But where Best Buy changed its policy, Charter is standing firm.

One employee said that Charter was more preoccupied with preventing its staff from talking to the media. One internal email sent Wednesday and seen by TechCrunch said that employees should ¬ provide any info or engage in further discussion with media outlets or investors making inquiries.&

That employee said they were &disappointed in and ashamed& of how Charter is acting. &This will all come back to bite them in the ass eventually,& the employee said.