Farrah was fed up with her vagina.

For the past two years, the 29-year-old dancer from Ohio had been dealing with severe pelvic pain and vaginal odor. “It was like 8/10, horrible core pain,” she says. “I couldn’t lie down. I couldn’t even work an office job. It was bad.”

When she visited doctors, she told them what she thought the culprit was: an allergic reaction to soy oil in a vat of water she’d swam in during a pirate-themed dinner theater performance. But they didn’t believe her. “They attempted to fix it with antibiotics,” she says. “And they just did nothing.”

So Farrah (who requested we withhold her full name to speak freely about health matters) started Googling her symptoms. That’s how she stumbled on Neueve, a vaginal health company that provides supplements, suppositories, and at-home vaginal microbiome testing kits.

She ordered a test from the company for $150, and it came back with a diagnosis: aerobic vaginitis (AV), a bacterial infection caused by an overgrowth of E. coli or streptococcus. She ordered supplements the company recommended, and she says the pain abated almost immediately. “I was just so glad to actually know what was wrong,” she says.

Farrah is one of a growing number of women who have used at-home tests to self-diagnose issues with the vaginal microbiome—an ecosystem of bacteria growing inside the vagina; the presence of “good” bacteria correlates with lower risk of STIs and other types of infections, according to numerous studies. The industry got a shoutout when the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Bryan Johnson recently posted on X that he had just given oral sex to his girlfriend, Kate Tolo, then followed up with a screengrab of her TinyHealth vaginal microbiome report. He proclaimed that she scored “100/100” and that hers was in the “top 1% of all vaginas” due to the dominance of Lactobacillus crispatus, a type of “good” bacteria found in the vagina.

Johnson’s thread garnered widespread mockery, with many questioning why Johnson would publicly quantify his partner’s vaginal health in such a fashion. But it also received replies from women online who are tracking their own vaginal microbiomes to treat their bacterial infections, to boost fertility, or just out of interest. Some even posted their results.

The market for at-home vaginal microbiome tests is growing—TinyHealth, the startup Tolo used, claims vaginal health testing sales spiked 2,000 percent within the first 48 hours of Johnson’s post—and similar companies include Juno Bio, which partners with Neueve; the UK-based Daye, and Evvy. But some experts believe there’s not yet enough research to support the long-term validity of such tests. None of the at-home kits on the market are approved by the FDA. There are also questions as to whether they empower women to take their health care into their own hands or simply create more anxiety for them.

Twenty-eight-year-old Samantha (she also requested a pseudonym given the sensitive nature of this topic) developed an interest in vaginal microbiome testing after experiencing a bout of bacterial vaginosis, or BV. She ordered a testing kit from Evvy upon the recommendation of the Facebook group Beyond BV, which offers support for women with recurring vaginal infections, and where they often post their own results.

Samantha found her test results useful, but she also noticed a distinct strain of paranoia within the group. For instance, when many women receive their results, they tend to focus on whether they have enough Lactobacillus crispatus, or “good” bacteria, in the vagina. “I’ll read posts where women are freaking out if they have like 97 percent crispatus and then they’ll retest and they’ll have like 60 percent and be really disappointed and scared,” she says. The opposite also holds true. “Women will post about having 100 percent crispatus and other women in the comments will just be like, ‘Oh, I’m so jealous, I’m having so many issues, I hope to be you one day.’”

Just in time for summer, Beatbot’s pool-cleaning robots are on sale through the end of the month. If you’re on the hunt for smarter pool care, these are some of the best pool-cleaning robots on the market, and we haven’t seen them sell for less. Whether you’re tired of paying the pool guy or just don’t want to deal with whatever scary stuff is floating in the water, these robots can help.

Be sure to check out our related buying guides for more summer outdoors coverage, including the best bug sprays, the best sunscreens, and the best fitness trackers.

Beatbot iSkim Ultra Robotic Pool Skimmer for $599 ($400 off)

This surface skimmer is slow and methodical with its approach, which means it won’t slam into your pool’s walls while doing its job. Use the app to set schedules, monitor the temperature, dock the unit, adjust its speed, and more. It has a 9-liter basket that holds a ton of crud and features both solar and magnetic wireless charging. If you care mostly about surface cleaning, this deal is solid.

Beatbot Sora 30 for $699 ($300 off)

The middle-of-the-line Beatbot Sora 30 scrubs the walls, waterline, shallow areas, and floor of your pool for up to five hours at a time. It also returns to the surface on its own when the job is done or when its battery is low, minimizing the amount of effort you have to put in. You can retrieve it with one tap in the app, which also allows you to select a cleaning mode, monitor the bot’s progress, and more. It doesn’t have surface-skimming capabilities, but if you don’t mind handling that part manually, this is a handy device that takes care of your other pool-cleaning needs without any hassle.

Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra for $2,649 ($500 off)

If only the best pool-cleaning robot will do, this is the model you want. This top-shelf robot can do it all: skim the surface, scrub your floors, walls, and waterline with its five cleaning brushes, and even detect debris with AI. It can run for up to six hours at a time and will return to the surface and float when your pool is squeaky-clean (or when the battery gets low). It’s a little heavy at 29 pounds, but the trade-off is never having to manually clean your pool again.

Additional Beatbot Deals

Almost the entire Beatbot lineup is on sale. Here are a few more discounts on models that differ slightly from the versions we linked above.

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Alwin Bakkenes, head of software engineering at Volvo Cars, reckons that leading a team to develop the technology stack powering the next generation of mobility at the automotive giant is one of the best jobs you can imagine.

“I’m not saying it’s always easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding and great fun,” he says. “People are passionate about our products, and you get instant feedback on the quality of what you do from consumers – whether that’s from friends, family or a community like Reddit. There’s just so much feedback, and that motivates and makes us better.”

Bakkenes reports to Volvo CTO Anders Bell and is a member of the extended executive management team that oversees operational governance. “I’m part of that group because software, of course, has a massive transformational impact on the company,” he says.

On a day-to-day basis, Bakkenes’ team works closely with technology and content partners to deliver customer experiences, with innovations in safe automation, core computing architecture and Android-based infotainment services. His team manages technology associated with Volvo’s advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and an in-house artificial intelligence (AI) factory.

“We also manage mobile network contracts because we operate in 85-plus countries globally,” he says. “So, we have a large scope, and our work defines a big part of how the vehicles behave and helps us to create different types of relationships with our customers.”