I took the day off to work in my yard and get it ready for winter, but ended up having to work for four hours anyway. Oh well. I tried. Didn't get all my grass plants chopped down, so I guess I have something fun to do this weekend. Yay.

I was going to go get groceries (one of the more depressing activities, given the prices) and the first thing I wanted to buy was seedless strawberry preserves for my biscuits. So I grab my laptop and head to Safeway's website, search for it, find I have two options, and have to decide between them. I can get Smucker's on sale at a higher price, which I know I'll like... or I can buy into the unknown with Safeway's store brand and save $1.50...

   
I decide to save myself the $1.50 and go to add it to my cart. But, as you can see, I have to log in to do that. So I log myself in... search for seedless strawberry preserves again... and this pops up...

What the actual fuck is this?

So I open up a new browser and use a proxy to start over. I go to Safeway and... same exact thing. It's a completely different price once I log in.

Which begs the question: How many times have I already been logged in or didn't check a price before logging in only to have Safeway charge me more because they know I already shop there?

This is a crock of shit, and has me wondering if it's grounds for a class action lawsuit when stores charge different groups of people different prices for the same thing. It should be illegal.

And here I thought dynamic pricing digital tags were going to be the problem. Turns out that we're already there.

I've made my feelings about AI quite clear. When it comes to AI "art"... it's theft. When it comes to AI "writing"... it's theft. AI has mined the hard work of countless creatives in order to make a Frankenstein monster that's delivered to you based on what you want it to provide.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

AI needs vast resources to operate, centered around the data centers which power them. And the more you look into it, the worse it gets.

AI many, many times does not provide accurate information. Which means a lot of people relying on AI for information are being lied to. And this is how misinformation starts, which is destroying us.

It goes on and on.

There are, however, many uses for which AI can be a benefit. One of my favorite has been AI analysis for weather patterns to provide more advanced warning to people in the path of weather-related danger. Or analyzing patient scans to provide better care. Stuf like that.

But, no, I don't endorse AI when it comes the mass-adoption models we're getting.

This morning I took a look at Facebook's Muse AI agent to see if it was worth destroying the planet to install more data centers.

But first thing's first. I asked my fuzzy Muse avatar to add some bear ears. And this is what I got...

Adorable.

And then I got to work. Asking Muse to help me with finding information, shop for the best prices, and helping me build a travel itinerary.

The results were better that what I've seen from other AI models, but there were always problems. Information wasn't entirely accurate. Travel itineraries were basic. And shopping usually ignored a bunch of places where I would have checked if I were charged with finding the best price...

I tried five times to have Muse find the best price on an item. It only did so three of the five, and I was able to find better with minimal effort twice. And so... would I trust Muse to hunt down the best price for me as a shopping agent? No, not really. I'd be too worried that it would give up before searching all the places I would check. The only way this would be useful to me would be if Muse checked a lot more places, including those that I didn't know to check and finds lower pricing than I could find. And what about finding the best shipping inclusive price? Without that, it's all pretty useless. Maybe it finds an item $10 cheaper at one place... but the shipping cost makes its total price $5 more? That just means I'm paying more. Which is certainly not worth stripping the planet of resources.

And so... cute as Muse is, I'm going to be ignoring it. Like I'm ignoring most AI tools that are being unleashed because they aren't worth the trouble.

Maybe if I asked Muse to turn into a cat?

Today was a sad day because I had to turn the heat on in my home because my cats were always curled up like they were freezing, but I'm putting on a happy face... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts...now...

   
• Incredible! Michel Gagné spent 14 years animating a feature film. Here's the trailer...

Looks amazing. Those fourteen years don't seem wasted, that's for sure.

   
• Tomb Raider! Footage from the reimagining of Tomb Raider is burning up the internet, and it looks more like a film than a game...

By way of comparison, here's what I was playing with on my PlayStation 1 back in 1996...

And, keep in mind, that was cutting-edge back in the day. It was the best graphics yet seen at the time and I couldn't believe how crazy-good it looked.

   
• DOOM! Every time they release a new trailer for Avengers: Doomsday they add just a little bit more of what's going on. This latest trailer adds more than a little bit, and the film looks phenomenal...

December seems so far away.

   
• Scrabbled! Well this is more than a little mind-blowing...

There are people whose brains just work different. And sometimes those people make the rest of us look less than smart. And speaking of less than smart...

   
• The Stupid, It Burns! Pretty much...

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Nobody, including scientists, are saying that science gets it right every time. But there is a scientific method that, when followed, is an authentic method of understanding the world... and medicine. Those who deny it and buy into the misinformation bullshit without knowing what the fuck they're talking about are literally responsible for harming society. We've got thousands dying from measles worldwide now. Measles!

   
• Stay Seated! I keep hearing these stories of airline passengers losing their shit because they asked somebody to swap seats with them and that person refused. It's insane. People book the seats they want. Sometimes they pay extra money to book the seats they want. If there's a seat you want, then book that fucking seat! I don't care if you want to sit next to your husband or grandmother or child. I want the seat that I paid for! I have swapped seats when asked a couple times... but only to an equivalent seat. I have twice asked somebody to switch seats with me... but they were military personnel flying home, and I was asking to swap my First Class seat with their Economy seat because they had already been on a very long flight from their deployment and I wanted to thank them for their service by letting them have a seat they could rest on before they get home to people who were excited to see them and not letting them rest. But otherwise? STOP EXPECTING PEOPLE TO GIVE UP THEIR SEAT!!!

   
• Super! "Artificial" means that something is "not naturally occurring." AI is not naturally occurring, and the only thing super about it is that real human intelligence made it possible. That's about as accurate as it gets.

This is just an attempt by billionaires to rebrand their tech to try and spin it from a negatively-perceived technology to a positively-perceived technology. You can call me "the enemy" all you want, but it's not going to change facts.

   
• Going Out on a High Note! I had never seen this before. It's wonderful...

Fuck anybody who thinks that public programming like this deserves to be defunded. Every other fucking thing on television is built to sell things to kids... not educate them. We need more education.

   
And now I'll go back to eating ramen because my cats like heat.

Hey Google, what is "Vibe Coding?" — Vibe Coding is a software development approach where you use natural language prompts or voice commands to tell an AI what to build, and the AI writes, tests, and fixes the code for you.

I had a problem when Adobe went to their package subscription model instead of allowing me to purchase the programs I wanted to use and upgrade them when I wanted to. If all I use is Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Light Room, and Adobe InDesign, why does it cost more to subscribe to them alone rather than a price subscription to everything you make?

I also have a very big problem when Adobe started treating their subscribers like pirate criminals with their idiotic licensing restrictions. I fucking loathe having to log in and out of my apps because I have a laptop, desktop, work computer, and travel laptop.

And don't get me started with Adobe shitting their unethical AI shit all over everything.

So when Affinity released apps which were inexpensive and could do many of the things I need to do with the Adobe apps, I was thrilled. Finally I could go back to the purchase model that I enjoyed, and I started using them at home while continuing to use Adobe for work. THEN the Affinity apps were made free and the only thing you have to pay for is if you want to use their AI tools. Which I do not. Nice!

And then ArtCraft used AI to "vibe code" Adobe app equivalents using the amazing Rust coding environment.

Hey Google, what is Rust? — Rust is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language designed for performance, type safety, and concurrency. It is widely recognized for delivering the blazing speed and low-level hardware control of C and C++, but with a crucial advantage: it enforces strict memory safety at compile time without needing a conventional garbage collector. Rust is well-suited for AI infrastructure and production systems, though it is rarely used for early-stage exploratory model research.

Oh the irony of Adobe slapping AI on their apps which made it so that people without graphic talent could fake what graphic artists do... only to have somebody use AI to turn around and make apps that fake what Adobe does.

As you can imagine, ArtCraft has been slammed with people trying to make accounts, so you can't activate a studio account just now, but you can still go to their site and download their individual apps, which do not require registration of any kind...

• PhotoCraft: An image editor in the vein of Photoshop.
• VectorCraft: A vector illustration app in the vein of Illustrator.
• FilmCraft: A video editing app in the vein of Premiere.
• LightCraft: A photo cataloging app in the vein of Lightroom.
• PdfCraft: A PDF tool in the vein of Acrobat.
• EffectCraft: A motion graphics tool in the vein of After Effects.
• DesignCraft: A page layout app in the vein of InDesign.

The only thing really missing is a website development app in the vein of DreamWeaver, a 2D animation app in the vein of Animate, and a 3D package like Substance. I'm sure they're coming.

I've been playing around with the apps and, yep, there it is. Vibe-coded alternatives to Adobe's bullshit and greed. They are distinct from Adobe and definitely aren't clones... but the way they operate is similar enough that I wasn't immediately lost. I was able to pick them up fairly quickly. They are a bit raw in places to start, but it's very easy to see where they are going. And the fact that they are open-source just means they're going to get there quicker because, theoretically, every coder on earth can contribute. It's pretty great.

Between Affinity Studio and now ArtCraft providing alternatives which will likely doom Adobe over something they fully brought upon themselves, I find myself thinking BWAH HA HA HA HAAAAAAA! in my head, because it's just so deserved. Few companies have worked so hard to make people loathe them than Adobe has. If I had to guess, I'd think that eventually Affinity Studio and ArtCraft will merge. Their business model is the same... free with a paid side of AI, so it could follow the path of Adobe, who bought out a bunch of their competitors to fold them into their lineup.

I remember long ago when I thought the world of Adobe. I thrilled to every new release and was excited at the prospect of giving them my money because they unleashed my creativity anew in the computer age. They earned my patronage and devotion. Then things went terribly wrong. Now I spend more time cursing them than appreciating them, and it's just sad. Maybe this latest salvo across their bow will force them to take a step back and return to who they used to be rather than the collection of customer-abusing decisions they became.

Because...

This is not about having to pay for the tools I use. I have never complained about that. I want to pay people for their hard work on my behalf.

No. This is entirely about not wanting to support companies that hate me.

I'm in a bitchy mood and probably shouldn't be blogging, but it's all good... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts...now...

   
• noPhone! Well, shoot. Guess I'm saving my money and not buying a new iPhone 18 Pro Max after all. Turns out the only thing I give a crap about, the new variable aperture, is a non-starter because the photo sensor on the iPhone is so small that the aperture doesn't really have much of an effect when it comes to depth of field...

And so... maybe next year. Because right now the camera on the 18 Pro is not enough for me to switch just as the 17 Pro wasn't before it.

   
• Eyesight! On Friday I had to run to the Big City for work. While I was there, I dropped by Costco. Where I spent way too much money. I bought new silverware because my old stainless steel stuff (which I love) is starting to get messed up... I bought new reading glasses, because it's time I bumped up from -1.5 to -2.0, alas... and I also bought a 2-pound tub of Rojo's Street Corn Dip, which I will end up eating in less than a week...

Because it's just that insanely delicious.

   
• The Great Beyond! After Costco, I ran by Fred Meyer to pick up five packages of Beyond Stack Burgers. But before I picked up my online order, I went inside and picked up an additional five packages because they were on sale for a crazy good price. Thank heavens I bought that small freezer for my garage!

So now I have 80 burgers ready to go. Since I eat them morning, noon, and night, I figure they might last me until mid-November sometime. Hopefully they will go on sale by then, because they're way expensive when they're not on sale. Of course, I'd rather pay full price than have them discontinued by Fred Meyer, since they are the only store in the entire valley which has them.

   
• Reach for the Sky! The latest season of Reacher was incredible. I was very sad it was over and I'm having to wait months or years for new episodes. However... we did get a new series to help lessen the blow, a Neagley spin-off!

The show is amazing, as expected. And, talk about lessening the blow, Amazon Prime may have given us Neagley... but they canceled Ride or Die, which pisses me the fuck off. The show was highly regarded, highly rated, and had great promise for a second season. How the hell do they decide where to spend their money?

   
• Rarity! Now this is fucking cool as all getout...

Isn't stuff like this incredible? Doesn't it just blow your mind that a substance like this can exist?

   
• Interplanet Janet! Alrighty... we're going from cool shit dug out from the earth to cool shit we're doing in space! This is an incredible video. And the visualizations they're using are some of the best I've seen. Well worth your valuable time to watch...

We are capable of some truly great things as we reach for the stars. Sadly, we would apparently rather spend our time fighting in the dirt. What a waste.

   
• The Incredible Shrinking Food! Thanks to idiotic fucking tariffs plus out-of-control fuel costs thanks to an idiotic fucking war, the price of food is insanely expensive now. And once again food companies are trying to camouflage it with shrinkflation. My hummus was advertised as having a lower price... BUT THE CONTAINER WAS NOTICEABLE SMALLER...

And don't even ask me what the fuck this is. According to the company who makes these chips, this is a full bag. Seriously, I haven't touched a single chip yet!

It's all so fucking insane. We're paying record prices for "LOWER GROCERIES ON DAY ONE" yet getting fuck-all for it.

   
And now back to being even more bitchy than what I can blog about.

And so... digital price tags have finally arrived in my region of Redneckistan.

Needless to say, I positively hate them. Mostly because the idea of "dynamic pricing" is shit. Stores raising prices at certain times of the day or to test the maximum people will pay or whatever else shitty things are coming out of it are needlessly consumer-hostile.

But the bigger reason? THEY ARE VERY DIFFICULT TO READ!

They are dim, low-contrast, and have a weird look to small type which makes them hard to see. Given that my eyes are not the best, my only option to actually read the fucking things when they are not at direct eye-level is to take a photo with my iPhone and zoom in to read them that way...

Assuming I can get past the fucking glare. I had to take THREE PHOTOS before I could get an angle where a photo could even help...

There are some laughs to be had, however. Take for instance these tomatoes that were on sale for 00¢ off regular price...

More than a couple signs were malfunctioning, making an already hard-to-read price even harder for visually-challenged people like me. Or anybody, really...

This is at Safeway, which used to truly be my most favorite place to shop. But then they started making it so you can only get discounts if you sign up for marketing. Then they made it so that some discounts were only available if you clipped a digital coupon. Then they made it so you got points but never really know exactly how to apply them. Then they made it so you only got the best savings if you bought them on subscribe-and-save. It's just been a slow decent into madness. And half the time something goes wrong... my coupons don't register so I get charged extra. Or a discount on the shelf doesn't register at the register. Or whatever. It's all such frickin' bullshit. JUST GIVE ME THE BEST PRICE WITHOUT HAVING TO JUMP THROUGH ALL THESE STUPID FUCKING HOOPS!

And, of course, like all grocery stores now-a-days, you are chained to their stupid app. Which also never works right. I wanted some diced potatoes, but the location in the store was obscured. So I clicked on the location icon and it brings up six pages of crap to scroll through, BUT NO FUCKING LOCATION!

Does anybody who develops these apps actually test them? Or use them... AT ALL?!?

I swear, most of the time I get to the point that I never want to shop at Safeway again. But switching to another store is kinda senseless because they're all getting to be the same.

I don't mean to sound like a whiny luddite, but how the fuck did we get here?

Wishing everybody (but especially our troops and those who lost loved-ones in the military) a peaceful Memorial Day as we take time to remember soldiers of days passed who died in service of their country.

As you likely already know if you've been reading for a while, I love me the robot floor cleaning robots. And right now I've been really loving the Narwal Flow 2 model which has been cleaning my downstairs (Carl) and upstairs (Joy) floors. I feel beyond fortunate to have these devices which make my life a little easier.

But anyway...

I've had a few questions about the mapping that my robots do, and have been looking to online forums for help. The other day while I was scrolling through one of them, a woman was very, very upset that the Flow 2 she just bought wasn't doing a good job of cleaning her floors. She was cursing the poor robot, the manufacturer, and everybody "lying" about how good the devices are.

And then she posted a photo.

Now, I stopped being a Catholic a long, long time ago. But I involuntarily crossed myself when I saw what her floors looked like. They weren't just a little dirty. They were filthy. The grime was so crusted on them that areas looked like they hadn't been cleaned in decades.

Not wanting to be an asshole, I decided to offer up a bit of help by saying something like "I had problem areas that didn't get cleaned too, so I scrubbed them down and just have the robot maintain my floors by running a couple times a week. It's been working out great."

But the subsequent comments on my comment were not nearly as diplomatic.

People were saying things like "Problem areas? That entire floor needs to be torn out so she can start over!" and "Forget the robot have you tried explosives?" which was quickly followed by "Try filling the robot with battery acid."

Then the woman decided to yell at me before deleting her post.

I guess I should feel lucky that my mom kept a clean house and I learned by example. Though, if I'm being honest, I still haven't finished unpacking my suitcase. It's sitting in the kitchen hallway where it's been for a week now.

But don't worry... thanks to Carl, the area around my suitcase is squeaky clean.

Yesterday one of the most important videos you'll ever see was released.

And I need you to watch it.

It's that important, and here it is...

Okay, that was a ruse. Here's the real deal...

I implore you to watch this. If you have kids then I implore you to watch this then talk with them about AI chatbots. I implore you to share this with people you know... especially if they have kids or are vulnerable in some way.

You could be saving a life...

This is fucking repugnant.

AI is stealing our precious resources like fresh water and electricity.

And now they're coming for the people. Exactly as we knew it would. Because there's money to be made.

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently acquired a brand new Narwal Flow 2 robot mop/vacuum. Here are my notes after a week with "Carl the Fourth" (named after Carl the janitor in Sixteen Candles, as my previous three robot vacuums were).

As I noted yesterday, this is a darn good robot mop/vacuum, and my home has never felt this clean with any other robot before. So let's get into it...

When it comes to mapping out your home, Carl the Fourth is pretty darn smart. Like all devices now, it's got "AI onboard" which means it can "see" objects and obstructions far better than older vacuums. Instead of mucking about by bumping into everything over and over, the Narwal Flow 2 using twin sensors to get a 3-D view of your home...

The initial mapping of my home was shockingly fast because Carl just zoomed around sensing where everything is. From the map he makes, I can see how he is seeing my home...

The AI is smart enough to detect objects like phones, cables, fabric, and shoes. I have two pairs of shoes by my door and they were identified easily (albeit in singular instead of plural form)...

Furniture like beds, couches, tables, and even pet feeders(!) are recognized and marked on the map. The problem is that they are not marked on the map correctly. Here's the map that Carl made of my home...

Let's look closer at my couches...

You can see that the coffee table perfect lines up where Carl cleaned. But the couches? The large couch is shown 2/3 of its length for some reason. But look at the smaller couch. Not only is it drawn massive, it also doesn't reflect the angle of the actual furniture. This is truly bizarre. Why doesn't the map representation match what is actually on the map? Maybe this will get better with updates.

When it comes to creating cleaning zones within your house, it's very difficult. I turn the furniture icons off because they're not remotely accurate. I would use past mopping data, but it doesn't show up. All you get is the sensor map... WHICH FADES AWAY WHEN YOU START DRAWING ZONES?!?? They're barely visible...

Ugh.

Narwal recommends that you first do a full vacuum-only so that any dirt doesn't interfere with the mopping so I did that. Even though my Roomba had cleaned just two days before, the Narwal Flow 2 came back looking filthy. Which means Carl the Fourth is obviously doing a deeper clean and getting closer to areas which collect dust, cat hair, and cobwebs. This was quite impressive.

I left some cat vomit residue from the previous week because I had gotten a notification that Carl had shipped and was on his way. I wanted to see if he would be able to scrub it up...

The answer is no. Not only did Carl not get them cleaned up, he didn't even identify them as dirty spots so he would attempt to clean them up. In reviews and the sales promotion, I saw video after video of Carl scrubbing spots clean with the "Smart Stain Detection"... but not here. I don't know if it's because my floor is dark wood instead of light wood, but should that really matter when the spots are fully contrasted against the floor? How did all three of these get missed? I sincerely hope that Narwal sends improvements to the Flow 2 in order to upgrade its smarts for stuff like this. I ended up having to wet paper towels and manually wipe them up as usual. Bummer.

The next morning I woke up to find that Jake had tried to hack up a hairball, leaving fresh water vomit dribbled from the dining room to the guest bedroom. So I opened up the Narwal app... drew a box around the area affected... then unleashed Carl and waited to see if the fresh spots would be recognized. Turns out they didn't need to be. He blazed over them without a second glance, obliterating them easily...

And then... yesterday I woke up to find that one of the cats had done a scarf and barf. So here we go. This is why I got Carl in the first place. Will he think that this is poop and avoid it? Or will he recognize this as cat vomit and attempt to clean it up?

Oh heck yeah! Carl noted the stain, then turned his vacuum on highest speed and attacked it. Going over it again and again until it was gone, then he mopped over it until the floor was clean. Great job, buddy! Though this does worry me a bit. I haven't had a chance to look at Carl's undercarriage to find out if there's cat puke smeared on it. And does this mean if my cats end up pooping on the floor for some reason that he will try to clean it? That's a good question.

UPDATE: Carl ran through the vomit and got his wheels messy. Not good. Would probably have been easier to clean the vomit than clean these wheels.

The water in the base station is pre-heated in the tank to 140º, which is supposed to give you a better mopping. The problem is that even fresh off the base station, the water Carl leaves behind is not at all hot. Maybe slightly warmer than ambient room temperature. This is disappointing after reading it so prominently in the promo literature, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. Where it likely makes a lot of difference is in cleaning the mop head during/after he's been mopping. Multiple rinses with 140º water is sure to clean the head better than room temperature. For that, I am thrilled, because it addresses one of my biggest problems I had with the Bissell SpinWave robot, which doesn't clean its spinny pads at all. You have to manually toss them in the wash.

There's a bigger problem with the spinny pads and vibrating pads and roller pads on other mopping robots, though. They just smear the dirt around with water, and my floors never felt freshly-mopped. The Narwal Flow 2 doesn't use any of these technologies... Carl instead uses a flat mopping head which has a "rolling track mop" head that rolls around it while constantly being rinsed off and re-wetted. It actually cleans your floors...

Just look at how my SpinWave "cleaned" my floors in comparison...

But here's something else that's cool about the mopping... the head can extend outward from the side to get closer to edges than it would if it just stayed underneath the unit. The technology behind the Narwal Flow 2 alone makes it better than any cleaning robot I've ever had. After mopping, my floors look as clean as if I hauled out a mop and manually scrubbed them. It's so amazing to see. I walk on the floors in my bare feet and they feel great. So good that I could never go back to the spinny pads, vibrating pads, and other stuff I had in my other mopping robots.

Time will tell if the notorious hard water where I live is going to build up inside the robot or the base station and ruin them. I toyed with the idea of using distilled water, but that would get very expensive very fast.

As expected for a robot with the advertised suction power, the vacuum is great. But it seems to have a bit of a problem due to the way it sections off your home. Carl understands that the kitchen is a different surface than the dining/living/bedroom area, so it attacks them separately. This is a bit of a problem, because the kitty litter that gets trapped against the transition strip between them doesn't really get vacuumed for some reason...

There's an HD camera on board which allows you to look out the front as cleaning is happening. You see what the robot sees...

You'll note that there's a directional pad in the lower left where you can manually drive the robot. I haven't done this yet. It might be fun from a remote-control car standpoint, but if I have to do that in order to vacuum or mop, I'll just grab my vacuum or mop!

Disclaimer: My home is wall-to-wall hardwood, so I don't know how well it does on carpet.

So... yeah... love this thing. Hope it gets even better. Let's sum this up, shall we...

THE GOOD

• The low profile allows the Flow 2 to easily get underneath tables, beds, and toe-kicks.
• The vacuum is great. Suction power is excellent and the edge spinner brush moves dirt from the right side of the robot towards the vacuum brush. Cat kibble that spilled on the kitchen floor were sucked up without issue.
• The mop is excellent. The technology behind what Narwal is doing is far, far superior to any other mopping robots I've used. The flat surface, constant cleaning, and ability to extend outward to clean everywhere it remarkable.
• The camera system is pretty good for fresh stains. Carl noted the cat vomit and cleaned it up. Not sure what happens if he runs across a hairball or a pile of poop though.
• The battery life is great. My entire floor can be cleaned using only 25%, even though Carl has to run back to the base station half-way through cleaning to get the dirty water swapped out for clean.
• The base station clean/dirty water tanks can get through two full moppings of my home. I was anticipating them needing to be changed out after every mopping, so this was a pleasant surprise.
• Before docking at the end of a clean, Carl will raise himself up and turn on full suction to grab any dirt and debris that was trapped underneath him. Very nice.
• You don't have to manually add the cleaning solution to the water tank and mix it up. There's a separate reservoir for the cleaner that gets injected into the water as the robot is filled up.
• The base station is big, but not comically so. It can handle two full cleanings of my home, so I think it's just the right size (as it starts doing regular cleanings so things aren't as dirty, the sensor may notice it and even go up to 3 or 4 cleanings between tank changes). I wish I could afford buying the tankless model, but I can't afford to have it plumbed into the kitchen. There is a cool LED color light bar which turns colors based on what's going on, but I haven't bothered to learn which colors mean what.
• The mopping pad is not only washed with hot water, it's dried afterwards. The refuse bag is also dried so any bacteria vacuumed up is killed. I have the drying on "quiet mode" which takes quite a while. There's faster modes available but they're (assumably) noisier.
• The operation is shockingly quiet given how powerful the vacuum suction is rated. It's twice as strong as my Roomba, but twice as quiet at the same time? How? Silent? Not at all. But I can easily watch television while it's in operation.
• Supports the Matter Smart Home standard (among others). Robot vacuums are fairly new to Matter, so it's pretty basic. I don't know why you would use it instead of the app, but it's there for your automations and integrations.
• Comes with a 3-Year Warranty. — I've come to expect 9 months to 1 year, so that's nice.

THE BAD

• UPDATE: The dirty water tank will start to stink. I mean really stink. The second time I went to empty it, the smell was gag-inducing. Likely from the bacteria breeding in it. So I ended up washing it out real good, then letting it sit open in the garage. Narwal desperately needs to add a UV light or something to keep bacteria odor from accumulating like this.
• The map on the app has to be fixed, because it's awful. The furniture is recognized, but not oriented properly so I turn it off. The mapping data becomes so light when drawing zones to clean that it's almost impossible to draw areas accurately. And even if you could, the zone drawing tool is horrible. Instead of dragging corners you get one corner to resize, then have to drag and re-size over and over until your get it right. And it's tough to do that because the touches aren't registered very well. You also can't draw non-square areas, which is baffling. The app is such a critical feature to get right, but the Narwal blows it utterly.
• Carl seems to get confused when he tries to dock with his base station. He comes up to it, turns around, starts backing in, then stops, comes forward, turns around to look at where he's supposed to park, then turns back around and finally backs in. Not sure what that's all about. Kinda cute though.
• There should be spinny brushes on both sides for a cleaner in this price range.
• As noted, the "Smart Stain Detection" didn't notice my dried-on stains at all. Not even a little bit. Since he will attack new stains, I guess this isn't a big deal? Time will tell.
• The sensors on the robot must be pretty good, because there's minimal bumping into furniture. All my other robots bash into stuff repeatedly no matter how many times they've cleaned my home.
• The retail price of the Narwal Flow 2 is a jaw-dropping $1500. If you bought it during its pre-release/early release, the price was $1100. I don't know that it's worth this cost. If I were pricing the value of it vs. the capabilities it has, I'd say around $850. Even that is really too expensive. But given how helpful it is at performing a task I no longer have to do... and doing that task very, very well... it could be worth it.
• The replacement parts (rollers, bags, fluids, etc.) are pretty expensive. The official Narwal bags are two for $20 on their site. Sure, third-party manufacturers will release cheaper parts, they always do, but why doesn't Narwal have reasonable pricing? Isn't this costing them business? Notable that Flow 2 supplies are very difficult to find on their site right now, and some of the information is not correct yet. Since the product is new, I'm guessing this will be resolved soon.

Ultimately I'm very happy with Carl the Fourth. He's very expensive, but does his job very well. Much better than I do with my quick cleanings on Sundays. Yes, I will still do an occasional deep-clean, but probably not every month. Maybe every-other-month or when company is coming. In-between, Carl will be vacuuming and mopping Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

I just hope that he has a long service life, because when you have built-in obsolescence or planned failure at this level, because if he dies right after the 3-Year Warranty ends, that's too soon.

I've purchased a number of robot mops and vacuums over the years. None of them have been noteworthy. Sure they work, but they don't work well. In the case of mops, they always seem to smear dirt around rather than mop it up... in the case of vacuums, they always seem to lack the ability to suck up dirt efficiently. So, more often than not, I end up mopping and vacuuming manually while my robots sit idle.

The problem is... I have cats.

In addition to year 'round kitty litter getting kicked around, this time of year Jake and Jenny are shedding like crazy. This means fur is everywhere and hacking up hairballs are more frequent. Yuck. Every Spring I toy with the idea of buying new robots to help keep things clean (all my floors are hardwood, so it's very noticeable).

So every Spring I toy with the idea of getting new-and-improved robots. Then I don't because I don't want to spend the money only to be disappointed again.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago and I said something to a friend about cat hair being everywhere and I was presented an option for a too-good-to-be true new robot that was being released on April 20th... the Narwal Flow 2.

So of course I researched all the pre-reviews of the product and did a deep dive into the competition.

The robot I was looking at a couple months ago was the Matic, former Google Nest engineers. The reviews were amazing and its reimagining of floor cleaning seemed a smart take. But it was way too tall. It wouldn't fit under any of my furniture, which means all the cat hair blowing under it would never be touched. So I passed.

I have mixed experiences with Dyson (I find them mostly sub-par) but was told they have been investing loads of their cash into robots, so I looked at some reviews. But their latest and greatest Spot+Scrub was getting terrible reviews.

The previous Narwal models were always in competition with Mova, Roborock, and Dreame, so I investigated their offerings. I had experience with i-Robot and Ecovacs, so I looked into those as well. After exhaustive research, I decided that the models competing with the Narwal Flow 2 weren't much better or worse, so I pushed the button on it because the offer I had was too good, then I hoped for the best.

After living with the robot for a week, I have opinions.

Which I will share tomorrow.

SPOILER ALERT: This is a darn good robot mop/vacuum, and my home has never felt this clean with any other robot before.