A table with a hole that will suck all your mahjong pieces and returns them perfectly stacked, ready to play. Obviously, it's powered by SORCERY...
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Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/first-world-problems-are-no-joke-2014-3
People jokingly describe things like lines at Starbucks as first world problems.
Actually, first world problems are serious, involving things like elevated risk of death related to high blood pressure, tobacco, high blood sugar, obesity, and more.
Although low-income countries face so-called modern risks as well, wealthy countries are more at risk given greater opportunity for indolence and consumption of too much food, notably junk food, as well as cigarettes and alcohol.
The World Health Organization described this as a risk transition in a 2009 report:
Modern risks, which are nearly as deadly as traditional risks used to be, include high blood pressure (responsible for 13% of deaths globally), tobacco use (9%), high blood glucose (6%), physical inactivity (6%), overweight and obesity (5%), and more.
The following chart shows how high-income countries (15% of the global population at the time) face disproportionately high mortality rates associated with these risks.
And some more detail on how first-world problems compare to third-world problems:
SEE ALSO: 13 nutrition lies that made the world fat and sick
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Not to be outdone by its competitors (or future owner), Time Warner Cable has released a transparency report of its own. From January to June last year, the telco obeyed some 12,000 information requests from the government that break down as such. Of the legal requests, 82 percent were for subpoenas, 12 percent were for court orders and four percent related to search warrants. Seventy-seven percent of the time that data was requested, it was subscriber and transactional info that was disclosed, 20 percent resulted in no data shared at all and three percent of the time, content information was disclosed. Because the report doesn't give exact numbers, though, comparing the precise amount of requests that TWC handled with its competitors isn't exactly easy.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/21/googles-project-tango-space-station/
It's arguably cool enough that Google is working on smartphones that can scan your surroundings, but now those devices are slated to take a spin in space too. How's that for living in the future? NASA first started sticking smartphones to machines back in 2011 when it used Samsung's Nexus S as the brains for a trio of robotic SPHERES satellite that use bursts of carbon dioxide to putter around the International Space Station. Those aging handsets will soon get the boot, as two of Google's Project Tango smartphones will hitch a ride on Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft when it resupplies the ISS in May. Why? The space agency is interested in seeing if the phone's spatial sensing abilities can help those floating robots navigate their surroundings better than they can right now. If it's lucky, NASA's zeal to upgrade the SPHERES' brains could ultimately lead to the development of a roaming robot that works as well outside the station (or around an asteroid) as it does inside a tin can hurtling around the earth.
Source: PCWorld
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The Social Security numbers and billing information of hundreds of thousands of patients in San Francisco and Los Angeles have been stolen after a break-in at a billing contractor.
The information was stored on computers that were stolen from Sutherland Healthcare Solutions in Torrance, Calif., which provides billing services for the health departments of Los Angeles County and San Francisco.
The breach affects 55,900 patients in San Francisco and 168,500 patients in Los Angeles County.
Most of the affected patients are uninsured, according to a press release from the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Personal information that was compromised includes names, billing information, some social security numbers, dates and locations of services, and dates of birth.
The theft underscores the dangerous possibility of data being stolen from contracted companies that have been entrusted with thousands of people's sensitive personal information.
Los Angeles County Assistant Auditor-Controller Robert Campbell told the Los Angeles Times that he's "not aware of another breach of this significance ever having occurred."
The health departments are notifying those affected by mail, but it might be challenging to reach everyone because some patients might have changed addresses or have difficulty receiving mail, said Rachael Kagan, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. San Francisco is also organizing other outreach efforts to track down affected patients.
Free credit monitoring will be offered to those whose information might have been compromised.
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