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Tuesday’s rolling in, {{first_name | friend}}. So is the world’s least glamorous mountain: old phones, busted laptops, mystery cords and that one remote with no known purpose. I’m talking about e-waste. The stuff we “totally meant to recycle” before it became a drawer antique.
🗑️ Every year, the world tosses so much e-waste, it weighs more than what? A) Every blue whale alive combined, B) The Eiffel Tower, C) The Great Wall of China or D) All of the above? The answer’s buried at the end. Recycle after reading.
🛡️ Your antivirus might be asleep at the wheel: Most antivirus programs update their threat lists once a day. Hackers release new malware every few minutes. Do the math. Webroot works differently. It uses real-time threat intelligence from 40 million devices to stop attacks the moment they appear, not hours later. Scans take seconds, won’t slow your computer and won’t drain your wallet either. My readers get 62% off Webroot Essentials today.* — Kim
TODAY’S DEEP DIVE
Pulse fiction
Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
🤯 WOW! Stanford tested seven popular fitness trackers against lab equipment. Heart rate was fine. Calorie counts missed by 27% on the best device and 93% on the worst. And that deep-sleep number? A guess built from your pulse and how much you wiggle.
The Short Version: Treat calories burned as fiction, watch trends instead of daily scores, wear watches snug and never let a wellness reading overrule a real symptom. Steps below.
📖 Read time: 1.5 minutes
Every morning, a little screen hands you a verdict. You burned 2,412 calories and got 47 minutes of deep sleep. It feels like the truth, because it was done with computers.
Here’s what nobody selling a $349 ring says out loud. Those numbers are guesses. I wear an Apple Watch and love it. But it’s a weather forecast, not a lab report.
🍩 Calories: Hole lot of nothing
Stanford tested seven wristbands, including the Apple Watch, Fitbit and Samsung, against lab gear. Heart rate? Six of seven within 5%. Calories? The best device missed by 27%. The worst by 93%.
The lead scientist’s verdict: “Basing the number of doughnuts you eat on how many calories your device says you burned is a really bad idea.”
Your watch never measures the oxygen your body actually uses. It guesses from your pulse, steps, age and weight. Eat those phantom calories back and you own a diet saboteur with a nice band.
Same with sleep. Rings and watches know you're asleep and roughly how long. The light/deep/REM breakdown is a guess from pulse and movement, and sleep labs catch them misjudging it. (Obsess over the score and you invent a new problem, orthosomnia. Gee thanks.)
And that morning "readiness score"? It's built on heart rate variability, the tiny timing shifts between beats, and it tanks over nothing like a late dinner, a warm bedroom, one glass of wine. Feel great but the app says you're wrecked? You're great. Don't cancel a workout because your jewelry said so.
Blood oxygen readings are wellness features, not medical devices. The sensors are cousins of hospital pulse oximeters, and a major New England Journal of Medicine study found those were nearly three times more likely to miss dangerously low oxygen in Black patients. The FDA warned about it. Short of breath? Don't let a cheerful "98%" talk you out of calling your doctor.
Heart rate is solid at rest, and rings often beat watches there (fingers have friendlier blood vessels). But sweaty bouncing wrists, tattoos and loose bands confuse the sensors, and rings tap out in the gym or the cold, when hand vessels clamp down.
🔑 Wear it, don’t swear by it
Calories burned are fiction. Never eat them back.
Watch the trend, not the day. A resting heart rate creeping up for a week is real.
Wear it snug, above the wrist bone. A loose band is a lying band.
Training for real? Get a chest strap. Exercise? I thought you said extra fries.
None of this means take the thing off. Apple's newest ad stars Amanda Faulkner, a psychiatrist whose watch kept flagging her resting heart rate. It had climbed from her usual 55 into the 90s. She felt tired, figured it was nothing, and went to the doctor anyway. Acute myeloid leukemia. Another 48 hours might have killed her. She's in remission, and she credits the watch. That's the trend rule saving a life.
🎯 Send this to someone who eats back every calorie their watch says they burned. The number’s wrong, and so is the second doughnut.
📱 Text-worthy: Your fitness tracker is guessing. Stanford tested 7 of them: heart rate was accurate, calories burned were off by 27% to 93%. Never eat back the calories your watch says you burned, and don’t trust the sleep-stage breakdown either. Trends matter. Daily numbers don’t.
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IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
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🎤 PODCAST: THE KIM KOMANDO SHOW
Viewer’s own AI caught his cancer first
(Starts at 16:02) Steve Brown’s doctors missed his cancer diagnosis. So he built an AI agent that caught what they didn’t. Saved his life.
🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.
WEB WATERCOOLER
☔ Weather gets smarter: Google is getting much better at answering the only weather question most of us care about: Do I need an umbrella? DeepMind’s WeatherNext 3 uses live satellite snapshots, updates every hour and forecasts on a 3-mile grid instead of the old 15.5-mile view. Google says rain predictions can be up to 50% more accurate, especially in places weather apps usually botch. That means fewer soaked commutes, canceled cookouts and panicked soccer texts. It’s in Search, Maps and Gemini.
Return label robbery: A fake FedEx label can turn your brand-new phone into somebody else’s payday. Scammers posing as Spectrum call recipients, claim the device was sent by mistake and promise a $100 gift card for returning it. Their emailed label routes the phone to the crook and leaves you owing the difference, roughly $900. Burn this into memory: No real company sends you a return label out of the blue over the phone. Hang up, and call the actual provider.
🏈 Kickoff, meet markup. Football's back, and so are the bills. On Sept. 17, existing Peacock subscribers start paying the new rates. Premium goes from $10.99 to $12.99 a month, Premium Plus from $16.99 to $19.99, and annual Premium jumps $20 to $129.99. ESPN Unlimited climbs the same day, $29.99 to $31.99. Only want Sunday Night Football? You know my play. Subscribe for a month, cancel at the buzzer. Prices are the one thing rising faster than a punt.
The comeback nobody streamed. CD revenue jumped 58.6% in the first half of 2026, per the RIAA. Vinyl rose 17.7%. Streaming? Up 4.7%. Why the plastic revival? We’re tired of "buying" things that vanish. Sony told a court this month you don't own your digital games. A disc can't be un-sold. Dig out the Discman. Your car's CD slot was right all along. It just skipped a generation. Cassette tapes have side A and side B so it’s only logical their successor would be the CD.
BROUGHT TO YOU BY
Your nightstand called. It wants backup.
4.6 ⭐ 2,400+ reviews
Count the cables on your nightstand. Phone cord. Watch puck. That little AirPods wire you can never find in the dark. Three plugs, three tangles, one outlet strip doing all the work.
This is the exact charger I have on my nightstand, and it replaced every last bit of cable chaos.
The Anker MagGo is a 3-in-1 Qi2 station.* Your iPhone snaps on magnetically at the full 15W, the Apple Watch and AirPods get their own spots, and the stand tilts up to 45 degrees, so you can prop the phone sideways and use StandBy mode as a bedside clock. It’s Apple Watch fast-charge certified, 0 to 100% in about 73 minutes.
The 40W adapter and cable, which almost nobody bothers to include anymore, are both in the box. Oh, when I travel, I bring this with me. Smart, right?
DEVICE ADVICE
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: That spare keyboard in your closet? It works on your smart TV. Plug it into a rear USB port, or pair it via Bluetooth in Settings. Now you're typing searches, emails and those ridiculous 16-character Wi-Fi passwords like a person, not spelling them out one arrow-click at a time. Your remote just got demoted.
Instagram's your birthday backup: The next time a friend's birthday actually enters your brain, trap it before it escapes. Open your Instagram chat with them, type the birthday wish, then press and hold Send. Pick the date and time, tap Send again. Done. When the cake photos appear, your message is already there looking thoughtful. You remembered. Technically. 😏
🎵 Alexa's been holding out on you: That Spotify or Apple Music subscription you already pay for? Alexa can play it, saved playlists, ad-free listening and all. In the Alexa app, go to More > Settings > Preferences > Music & Podcasts > Link New Service. Sign in, then make it your default. Now "play my playlist" just works. No more announcing "on Spotify" like it's a formal introduction.
Your phone's side button is wasted on default: Give it a real job. On iPhones with an Action button, open Settings > Action button and pick Voice Memo, Silent Mode or Recognize Music. Got Samsung? Settings > Advanced features > Side button. Set one action for a double press and another for a long press. Two shortcuts, one button. Who knew it had range?
📸 Screenshot like you mean it: Flameshot is a free tool that marks up your screenshots the second you grab them. Arrows, text, highlights, boxes and blur, right there. Cover an email address or circle the problem without opening another app. Try it out on Mac and Windows. Your old routine (screenshot, open editor, squint, give up) is officially retired.
KIM’S DAILY DEALS
As an Amazon Associate, some links pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. Keeps this newsletter free. Thank you.
📦 Haul, yeah
Save more on Amazon Haul. Everything here is under $20.
💡 Plug-in peace: LED night-lights (33% off, $8, two-pack)
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No more fumbling in the dark at 2 a.m. They turn on automatically at dusk and off at dawn. The warm glow is easy on your eyes, and they use only 0.3W. Low power, high convenience.
Image: L LOHAS LED
😌 Fuzzy and cozy: One reviewer says these women’s slip-on slippers (53% off, $17) feel “soft and warm without making my feet feel overheated.”
Clear winner: This roll of double-sided mounting tape (20% off, $16) has endless uses. Trim it to size, then peel off cleanly. A must for renters.
✨ Streak of genius: A six-pack of microfiber cleaning cloths (33% off, $10) can polish glasses, phone screens and more without leaving lint behind.
Tank you: Vacplus’ toilet bowl cleaner tablets (23% off, $10) fight stains and odors with every flush. Less scrubbing for your porcelain throne.
💸 Easy on your wallet: Tap here for all of Amazon’s steals live right now. →
Prices and deals were accurate at the time of publication.
WHAT THE TECH?
Image: @bosunatiklama via X
🥋 Ctrl + Alt + Defeat
At a Russian electronics store, a customer shoved Syoma, a humanoid “tech consultant.” Instead of filing an HR complaint, Syoma backed up, squared its little robot fists and started firing off karate-looking kicks until two employees wrestled it down and shut it off.
Syoma was sent for an “emotional reboot.” Nobody was hurt, but nobody knows exactly what triggered the Cobra Kai routine either. Until we do, maybe stop shoving the robots.
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LOGGING OUT …
🎓 What you learned today: Never eat back the calories your watch says you burned, never trust a return label from a stranger on the phone, and never pay full price for Peacock when you can subscribe for a month and cancel at the buzzer. Also, a robot in Russia knows karate now. Sleep tight.
🔜 Tomorrow: A couple pays $200 a month for two phones. I found the catch, and it's not the one they think.
🌎 The answer: D) All of the above. Combined. The planet trashes over 60 million metric tons of electronics a year, heavier than the heaviest thing humans ever built, and only about a fifth gets properly recycled. The gold in that pile of raw materials? Worth billions.
Reminds me, I lost a gold bar. Au man! 👑
🛡️ One wrong click is all it takes: A malicious link. A fake login page. A download that looked totally legit. That’s all it takes to hand a hacker everything on your computer. Webroot catches threats in real time, before they can do damage, and scans in seconds without slowing your computer down. It’s the antivirus I trust on my own devices. Grab my exclusive 62% off Webroot Essentials today.*
⏳ You can do almost anything for 20 minutes. Start there. — Kim
Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily
🏆 THE KIM CHALLENGE: Forward this to ONE person who needs to hear it today. Pick the person who popped into your head while reading. You know who it is.
Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, Anker, L LOHAS LED, @bosunatiklama via X
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