It’s down to just three of the six gyroscopes NASA upgraded it with in 2009 — and one of those is flaking out. According to Ars Technica, the agency’s engineers figured out a way to keep the Hubble going on a single gyro.

In this one-gyro mode, Hubble’s control system would receive inputs from the single gyroscope in combination with magnetometers, Sun sensors, and star trackers.

Unfortunately, it’s also got issues with one of its guidance sensors, and its orbit is decaying, putting it a little over a decade from falling out of the sky. NASA and SpaceX have studied whether they can push it farther out again.

Listen, that’s none of your, my, or anyone else’s business. The point is, it happened. What Hi-Fi? wrote about it a few days ago, and the $549.95 Yamaha CD-C603 sounds just fine — if you don’t mind spending hundreds more than you might for one of the old carousel-style CD changers with nearly all the same features on eBay.

After Apple seemingly blocked its iMessage for Android solution, the company posted that Beeper Cloud is “now fully working with iMessage.”

But that’s not its famed “breakthrough” Beeper Mini approach that runs directly on Android phones and sends messages straight to Apple’s servers — that’s still broken. Beeper co-founder Eric Migicovsky told The Verge in an email that Beeper Cloud uses Pypush and doesn’t use Mac servers owned by the company.

Update December 9th, 2023, 1:55PM ET: Updated with input from Beeper co-founder Eric Migicovsky.

That’s right, Dan Seifert joined the pod this week (click here to listen in your favorite podcast app) with his unhinged and totally useable Dex setup and we spent quite a bit of time talking about the dream of a phone that actually doubles as a laptop.

We also talked about Google’s big new AI, the chaos at Spotify, and even found time to talk about a few gadgets and the perils of owning digital media.

After being told earlier this year it can’t enforce its NDAs that forbid bad reviews from unhappy customers. the company has shut down its customer care support and canceled all outstanding tooth aligner orders. It also says that its “Lifetime Smile Guarantee no longer exists.”

SDC is still happy to take in money, though:

I’m on the SmilePay Plan. Do I need to keep paying for my aligners?

SmilePay customers are expected to continue to make all monthly payments until payment has been made in full per the terms of our SmilePay program. For more questions, please contact HFD at 1-877-874-3877 or support@gohfd.com.

New York Times reporter Erin Griffith threaded a tidy summary of SmileDirectClub’s history of suing dentists.

The New York Times published a look at OpenAI’s firing and rehiring of CEO Sam Altman. The moment-by-moment rundown doesn’t dig into the claims of Altman being “psychologically abusive” from yesterday’s Washington Post story.

Remember, this all started less than a month ago.

The company acknowledged on Thursday that ChatGPT has been phoning it in lately (again), and it’s fixing it. Then overnight, it made a series of posts about the chatbot training process, saying it must evaluate the model using certain metrics — AI benchmarks, you might say — calling it “an artisanal multi-person effort.”

You know, like bread with seeds in it.

Found this while I was poking around Denon’s site and found a page about its history, and this logo stopped me instantly. Just look at this thing!

Denon, listen, you gotta put this on the front of a receiver. Just one. I will buy it tomorrow, I don’t care.

That said, things with Beeper Mini might be a little messed up while you wait. The company posted that the fix is “very close, and just a matter of a bit more time and effort.”

The company says it’s resetting the counter on trial memberships as soon as the fix is int... but because of how iMessage works, it won’t fall back to SMS for up to a day.

There are some very good options if you’ve got the time. Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron is in theaters, while Leave the World Behind is streaming on Netflix. When it comes to games, things are pretty busy: Baldur’s Gate 3 finally hit Xbox, Final Fantasy XVI has some surprise DLC, Lego Fortnite launched, and Apple Arcade added a few new titles like Sonic Dream Team.

They met for an hour on Thursday, lead attorneys for both sides told Judge James Donato in a filing (pdf) this evening, following an earlier settlement discussion between Sweeney and Google’s heads of partnerships and product management for Android that was ordered by the court.

“These meetings did not result in a settlement.”

Also new: This is the final verdict form (pdf) the jury will use to decide Epic v. Google.

The lawsuit, which was certified on Friday, is “the largest ever certified under California’s Equal Pay Act,” Variety reports.

VR studio Tender Claws and the Tender Claws Human Union have reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement, and it’s “one of the first union contracts for video game developers in the US,” according to a press release. Proposals in the agreement include pay scales, codifying LGBTQIA+ inclusive benefits, benefits like dental insurance, and codifying virtual reality breaks.

Tender Claws is currently developing Stranger Things VR.

Google is telling users who pay less for Premium because they once had Google Play Music or YouTube Red that they’ll owe the recently-instated $13.99 per month fee in January, 9to5Google reports.

Google had already said that it was going to give legacy subscribers a grace period before bumping them up to the higher fee, but that period is now coming to an end.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri’s small announcement is important to anyone who publishes content on the internet. Until now, traffic from Threads was indistinguishable from Instagram in the metrics used by sites like this one, But now that it has a separate link referrer, site owners can see for themselves how much traffic it’s sending in comparison to competitors.

On the other hand, Twitter / X allegedly just signed up 10 million new people in a week, if you can believe that.

Ten years old, but new to me: a website that plays a tone every time a Wikipedia page is updated. It’s a soothing antidote to ... basically every other browser tab, at this point.

The bell-like sounds of a celesta correspond to edits with a net addition of content to Wikipedia, and the strums of a clavichord correspond to net subtractions of content.

That, of course, is from Wikipedia.

Today’s Windows 11 Insider Preview (Build 22635.2850) adds WhatsApp to the “Share using” sheet in the OS, according to a blog post about the update. Microsoft plans to add more apps to the share window over time.

There’s also now a one-click install experience in the Windows Store app that lets you continue browsing as the app downloads and installs.

The US Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of two gene-based therapies for sickle cell disease, one of which uses the genome editing technology CRISPR. It’s a big milestone, but access to the therapies for now will still be very limited and expensive, the New York Times explains.

Keith Berman, who claimed he wasn’t taking compensation in his role as CEO, actually splashed out a bunch of company money on himself. Also, he claimed that he could test for covid in 15 seconds. Also also, my guy used a “fake persona to repeat false and misleading statements to investors on internet message boards.”

A new report from The Washington Post says that senior OpenAI staffers had indicated to the board Altman had been “psychologically abusive.” The board had also worried that it couldn’t keep Altman accountable.

All of that contributed to Altman’s firing, the report says — though, as we now know, Altman ultimately came out on top.

Users reported issues like delayed notifications on Friday, and a Reddit user who says they’re on the Beeper team says that the company is “dealing with an outage on the Beeper Mini side.”

Seems like it’s just a blip and that Beeper Mini will live another day.

Update, December 8th, 5:01PM ET: Welp.

Tang Tan, the company’s vice president of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch, is stepping down in February, according to a report from Bloomberg. He also oversaw the team that works on the AirPods.

Sources tell Bloomberg that Tan’s departure “is a blow,” adding that “he made critical decisions about Apple’s most important products.” Earlier this week, Bloomberg also reported that Steve Hotelling, the exec in charge of Apple’s touchscreen tech, health sensors, and Face ID, is retiring.