What about your work-life balance?

We hope you had a good day and now we want to give you some exciting information to take with you into the evening. t3n Daily is also available as a newsletter. Here are the topics of the day.

The issue of work-life balance is very popular with many employees. But a recent survey shows that German employees are no longer as satisfied with their work-life balance as they were last year. According to a survey of 1,500 German employees by the opinion research institute Gallup, 38 percent of those surveyed currently say that their work allows them to spend enough time with family and friends. This is a minus of four percent compared to the previous year.

42 percent of the employees surveyed stated that they felt stressed at work. In 2022 it was still 40 percent. It is similar in other large industrialized countries: in France it is 40 percent, in Japan 42 and in Great Britain 38 percent.

News from Cowboy: The Belgian e-bike startup is expanding its portfolio with a cruiser model in Dutch bike design. The new model is similar to the Cowboy 4, but offers an “upright and more relaxed sitting position for more driving comfort”. As Cowboy explains, the company is responding to the needs of the community with the new cruiser. According to surveys, they want an “upright sitting position and a better view of the road”.

With these changes to the riding position, the new cruiser e-bike should be in direct competition with Vanmoof’s S5 and S4. The cruiser model, weighing 19.3 kilograms, is available in black or sand at the introductory price of 2,990 euros. From August, Cowboy will increase the prices of its e-bikes. The company has not yet revealed how much they will be more expensive.

The next Airpods Pro could have special features. As the usually well-informed Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman reports, the earbuds are to be given some health-tracking functions in the long term. Accordingly, Apple is working on a new hearing test function that plays different tones and sounds. This should allow the Airpods to determine how good a person’s hearing is. The idea behind it is to help users in their search for possible hearing problems.

In addition, Apple could revise the Airpods so that they can also be used as a hearing aid. Apple’s engineers are also said to be working on adding sensors to the earbuds to measure body temperature through the ear canal. It will probably be a while before these health functions find their way into the Airpods.

Is the Heidelberg startup Aleph Alpha facing a rain of money? According to insider information from the Handelsblatt, prominent investors could be won: The chip companies Intel and Nvidia as well as the software giant SAP are said to belong to them. We are talking about more than 100 million euros. With its AI language model called Luminous, Aleph Alpha has developed a system that can create text and answer questions. It thus competes directly with OpenAI and its ChatGPT language model.

In the future, Aleph Alpha wants to make it easier for users to understand where the AI ​​gets its information from. With the current financing round, the startup has reached a valuation of 450 million euros. Only recently, however, a study showed that the Luminous AI should not be compatible with the draft of the European AI Pact.

This robot has it all: M4, as it is called, can not only drive and walk – but also fly. He does this by turning his wheels into rotors. Rolling over obstacles is also no problem for the robot. In total, he can move in eight ways with the help of AI.

According to the researchers, the goal was “to push the boundaries of robotic locomotion.” To do this, a system was developed that “shows exceptional mobility capabilities with a wide range of different modes of locomotion”. The M4 project “successfully achieved” this goal. With its wide range of motion sequences, the robot would be used in many areas: for example, transporting injured people to a hospital or exploring other planets.

That’s it for today’s t3n daily. You can find much more about all aspects of digital life, working life and the future around the clock at t3n.de.