judgecorp writes “BT Retail has started testing Carrier Grade NAT (CGNAT) with its customer. CGNAT is a controversial practice, in which IP addresses are shared between customers, limiting what customers can do on the open Internet. Although CGNAT goes against the Internet’s original end-to-end principles, ISPs say they are forced to use it because IPv4 addresses are running out, and IPv6 is not widely implemented. BT’s subsidiary PlusNet has already carried out CGNAT trials, and now BT is trying it on “Option 1″ customers who pay for low Internet usage.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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BT Begins Customer Tests of Carrier Grade NAT
Microsoft has confirmed that “Windows Blue,” the code name for the next version of (or major update to) Windows, will arrive later this year. It’ll include changes based on feedback from the launch of Windows 8 (possibly the return of the Start Button), and requested by users. The Verge has the full story . Read more… 
The Nook HD and HD+ may not be fully ‘open’ Android tablets, but they’re now much more open [Read more] 
The brewing company’s Brazilian arm creates cups, which, if you clink them together to say cheers, turn both parties into Facebook friends. Oh, how difficult. [Read more] 
Nerval’s Lobster writes “Back in January, when Wolfram Alpha launched an updated version of its Personal Analytics for Facebook module, the self-billed ‘computational knowledge engine’ asked users to contribute their detailed Facebook data for research purposes. The researchers at Wolfram Alpha, having crunched all that information, are now offering some data on how users interact with Facebook. For starters, the median number of ‘friends’ is 342, with the average number of friends peaking for those in their late teens before declining at a steady rate. Younger people also have a tendency to largely add Facebook friends around their own age — for example, someone who’s 20 might have lots of friends in the twenty-something range, and comparatively few in other decades of life—while middle-aged people tend to have friends across the age spectrum. Beyond that, the Wolfram Alpha blog offers up some interesting information about friend counts (and ‘friend of friend’ counts), how friends’ networks tend to ‘cluster’ around life events such as school and sports teams, and even how peoples’ postings tend to evolve as they get older — as people age, for example, they tend to talk less about video games and more about politics. ‘It feels like we’re starting to be able to train a serious “computational telescope” on the “social universe,”‘ the blog concluded. ‘And it’s letting us discover all sorts of phenomena.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Researchers say their experimental arrays sense pressure in the same range as the human fingertip, which could result in better bots and prosthetics. [Read more] 
Today, FedEx announced it will begin allowing customers to pay $5 to reschedule a delivery to a new date or location, or $10 to narrow delivery down to a 2-hour window. Read more… 