The Latest News Round-Up

Welcome to the weekly news round-up from our marketing team, featuring highlights from inside our business and the broader industry. 

First up this week, let’s take a minute to talk about the £735m bonus received by the founder of smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi. Seven hundred and thirty-five million pounds. Recipient Lei Jun has pledged to donate the entire amount (minus taxes) to “charitable purposes”.

This week’s privacy drama has been provided courtesy of Julian Assange and Amazon’s Alexa.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was arrested yesterday, having finally outstayed his welcome following 7 years living in Ecuador’s London embassy.

It was also revealed this week that Amazon’s Alexa voice recordings are reviewed by actual humans, causing outrage among users who don’t like the idea of strangers listening to them singing in the shower. 

Cool stuff has happened in space this week, with the world seeing the first image of a black hole courtesy of an MIT team led by Dr Katie Bouman, and SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy completing its first commercial flight, complete with all 3 boosters landing safely.

And finally, as we head into the wedding season, we’ve got another “robots are coming for our jobs” story for you. Yep, even wedding photographers are no longer safe, following the launch of Eva the photographer robot, who was hired for her first wedding last weekend.

It's been another busy week on the service desk, with the team resolving email outages and network connectivity issues for customers, and undertaking a range of software installations.