u/megamusix

Hey there,

We’re looking to replace our household upright vacuum (a bulky corded Shark unit, don’t have the model on hand) to use as a more powerful manual supplement to our Roborock Qrevo S, for spot cleaning and furniture/cat hair.

In navigating the many (frankly confusing) Dyson models and terminologies, I’ve become gravitated towards the PencilVac ($425 on Amazon) and V8 Cyclone ($300 there too) due to their prices and features. However, after plenty of research on specs and reviews, I sense there are pros and cons to each - namely, V8 Cyclone doesn’t come with many accessories, and PencilVac isn’t very practical as a handheld vac for non-floor tasks.

Obviously, PencilVac is very attractive aesthetics-wise, and would be a massive improvement over our bulky Shark, but then again, so would the V8 Cyclone, just not quite as much.

We have a relatively small space, so capacity and battery life aren’t as important to us as nimbleness and slimness.

Are there any owners of either (or both?!) who can provide your experiences and thoughts on these points? Anything would be greatly appreciated - we’re heading to our nearby Dyson store to check them both out today.

Thanks!

For those who stay on OPD "High" and Creep "Off" at all times, beware that updating to 2.1.2 appears to reset both of these settings. My OPD was set to "Off" and my Creep was set to "On", which led to unexpected driving behavior when getting into my car for the first time post-update.

Easy to fix, of course, but just wanted to provide a warning to anyone else who may be updating between commutes etc.

There’s no shortage of $12-15 and even pushing $20 breakfast sandwiches/burritos in the city. I’m on the hunt for one around or below $10, and even in the $6-8 range if there’s anywhere doing those (might be a stretch in 2026).

Have seen some names thrown around from a couple years ago - Newkirk’s, Kahnfection, Breakfast Little - but none are particularly close by. Even Cole Valley, Divis, Lower Haight would work.

Would love to hear any ideas!

TL;DR My stock wiper blades have gotten kind of busted. Any tips or replacement recommendations?

I street park my EX30 and, as a result, there are often various small seedlings and tree droppings that collect on the car overnight, especially on the windshield. Unfortunately, some manage to get wedged beneath the (stock, 6 month old) wiper blades, making things smear or get dragged around, and attempting to clean the blades has only seemingly exacerbated the issue, now resulting in large streaks from the left wiper. Not sure if I somehow damaged the rubber blade edges or what.

I know the EX30 isn’t unique in the ability to replace wiper blades with aftermarket ones, but does anyone have any recommendations or important considerations (aside from the manual, which I’ll check)? I saw some by RainX in Target the other night and almost considered them.

(On an unrelated note, my in-laws’ car has the most pristine wipers and windshield smoothness I’ve ever seen; a dry swipe with no fluid glides silently like it’s on ice. Wonder if that’s attainable while dealing with street parked debris, though…)

(Disclaimer: I'm a regular consumer who bought a car I love, I haven't been paid for this lol)

I recently saw Edmunds' 1 year review of their EX30 and was shocked by how off-base it was compared to my experience with the car. I think it boiled down to two things:

1. Some of their complaints revolved around the driver attention software and software bugs that have either been fixed as of 1.8 or aren't widespread/reproducible (I got my car just before v1.8 so I only experienced the driver monitoring nags for a brief period before they effectively disappeared with the update). It's surprising to me that Edmunds would release a postmortem with blatantly out-of-date info pertaining to the monitoring specifically, as I understand this was a pain point in the past but really shouldn't be a current issue at all. Comes across as though the complaints were coming from people who hadn't driven the car in the past 6 months.
2. They frequently discussed how the price/value didn't make sense for the car. While I can understand a $48k+ Twin Motor variant feeling overpriced for what you get, they seemingly judged the entire EX30 line itself off of that, whereas my $40k Single Motor feels like a phenomenal deal for what you get.

Between their rock-bottom rating (5.1/10, placing the EX30 last on their "luxury EVs" list) and the endless negative feedback I see on Facebook groups and this very subreddit - however selectively biased it may be - I'm just astonished by how my experience with my car seemingly doesn't line up with others' whatsoever.

As a caveat, mine is a $40k SMER Plus manufactured in late 2025, so no battery recall issue to worry about, and I've "only" owned it for 4 months/2k miles. But I just wanted to come on here to say I'm still loving the car, and almost every day I drive it, my wife and I find ourselves raving about how much we love every aspect of it. Are there quirks/minor issues or features I'd love to see addressed in future software updates? Sure - and thankfully Volvo has actually shown a track record of listening to customer feedback and iterating + improving on that front. But is it an outright piece of garbage like many seem to be claiming? Not even close, in my experience.

First of all, for a first dev beta, macOS 27 is great so far. A few minor quirks but nothing game-breaking. And Siri AI has definitely lived up to the hype and impressed me a lot thus far.

One thing I was wondering when testing its capabilities in some third party apps (namely, Microsoft Excel) is the difference between it interpreting via Onscreen Awareness - what I assume is just taking a screenshot and parsing it - vs. App Intents and/or file awareness. Let me explain:

I had a spreadsheet open in Excel. I asked it to summarize the spreadsheet, and after some poking, discovered it was just going off of what was visible in the current view - not the entirety of the file or table. However, when I right-clicked the file in Finder and used Ask Siri there, it was able to read and interpret the full file accurately since it was included as an attachment - even though .xlsx is a proprietary data format.

Then, there's the question of App Intents. So asking Siri AI to add a row to the table in Excel didn't work (nor did Numbers, which I thought might work since it's Apple's own app). But are there situations where it would be able to take actions with a foreground app via App Intents? If so, out of curiosity, what is the underlying architectural difference between Onscreen Awareness and deeper interpretations of documents via file or App Intent? e.g. If I ask about an open Excel spreadsheet, what dictates whether it simply analyzes the visible screen or dives into the app to get the contents (including off-screen/hidden material)?

https://www.volvocars.com/us/support/topic/32baedb1923875bac0a801517b21e068/

This Volvo Support article (US region) talks about Plug and Charge but caveats that it may not be available in all regions. I don't see any of the settings for Plug and Charge in the places it says (Volvo app or in-car) - has anyone had any luck with this in the US, or is it simply not available? Any chance for it becoming available in the future?

So now that Gemini is rolling out (just activated it on my EX30 - if you're not prompted, head to Settings -> Google -> "Switch to Gemini" should appear at the top), what are some interesting ways to use it and capabilities it brings to the table over Google Assistant?

On Google Assistant, I had previously asked it basic "Google search" questions, like "what was the 2025 CPI change in the US" and it would read out a little summary. But asking a more natural language question like "what's a good weekend destination I can get to with my current range" didn't work on it, whereas it works on Gemini. Same with stuff like "what's a highly rated date night spot within 5 miles", etc.

But I assume there's more that it can do. I've never used Gemini before, but I assume it would be able to grab context from my Google Calendar or Gmail? Very interested to see how people start to use this - share your experiences here!

EDIT: Update: I was running a bit late for an appointment this morning and wanted to know what the parking situation was like, while I was en route. I asked "Hey Google, what's the parking situation at my destination?" and it spoke a bit about how there's metered street parking on the block and unmetered 2-hour parking on the side streets on either end. It asked if I needed anything else, I said no, and then it said "Ok, I'll let you get back to driving then. Let me know if you need anything else."

Sure enough, when I got there it was exactly right. I don't know if it had that info in the Google Maps listing or read reviews or had it graphed out or did visual Street View analysis or what, but it worked.

...actually kind of useful lol, I'm not gonna lie