10 minute movie downloads: Google’s high-speed broadband now live in Stanford

By Jeff Hughes Published August 24, 2011

Last year we heard that Stanford residents would be getting first taste of Google’s delectable 1 Gbps fiber network project. Now it seems that the beta test has gone live for those near the university.

Cnet reports that the service has been in the market for a month; one of the first to try out the ultra high-speed was Stanford econ professor Martin Conroy, and he’s been putting it to good use. The beta test area, also known as those-who-are-worthy, is located at the university’s Residential Subdivision, which contains a mix of both faculty and students.

Recommended Videos

A Reddit user called The Team wrote in a gloating thread titled “I just got Google Fiber” that residents were given a wireless N router and told the ultra-high-speed service was free for a year.

Subsequently, The Team downloaded a 1.6GB movie in 10 minutes. Posting results from Speedtest.net, it was found that the download speeds maxed out at about 151.68 Mb/s and 92.79Mb/s respectively. All without a cap. The Reddit user announced he would be going on a downloading spree.

151 Mb/s isn’t 1Gbps, but it is impressive. The beta is the first stop on the way to Kansas City, Kansas where Google plans to build a much larger network. Kansas city beat out over 1,100 other applications for the honor; even hardcore Topeka, Kansas which renamed itself to Google.

The broad Google plan, which is in line with Federal goals, is to get America up from our global rank of 15 for broadband access. It’s hoped that ultra-high-speed in homes and business will drive innovation.

Alongside Google’s efforts, the 29 university-strong Gig.U project plans on bringing 1 Gbps broadband to many college communities in America’s heartland.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

I'm a SF Bay Area-based writer/ninja that loves anything geek, tech, comic, social media or gaming-related.

Topics

Web
Google

Computing

The Mac Pro nearly received an M3 Extreme chip twice as powerful as M3 Ultra

High production costs likely killed Apple’s M3 Extreme plans

Apple's Mac Pro on a table at a press event.

Apple discontinued the Mac Pro earlier this year, ending a 20-year run for a computer that once represented the very best of the company’s desktop lineup. However, Apple reportedly had much bigger plans for the machine before ultimately replacing it with the Mac Studio.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple developed an M3 Extreme chip that could have offered twice as many CPU and GPU cores as the M3 Ultra. The processor was intended to sit above the Ultra tier and could have finally given the Mac Pro the performance advantage it badly needed. Apple eventually abandoned the chip due to concerns over production costs and limited demand for such an expensive machine.

Computing

Hidden prompts can secretly rewrite an AI’s memory, and researchers say that’s a serious problem

Researchers discover AI attack that rewrites an assistant's long-term memory

Chatbot on a smartphone.

Large language models are getting better at remembering us. Whether it's your preferred writing style, recurring tasks, shopping habits or project deadlines, AI assistants are increasingly storing long-term memories to make future conversations feel more personal and useful. But according to new research, that same feature could become one of AI's biggest security vulnerabilities.

Researchers from New Mexico State University have demonstrated a new attack called GhostWriter, capable of secretly planting false memories inside AI agents. Rather than stealing information outright, the attack manipulates what an AI remembers, potentially causing it to make dangerous decisions long after the original attack has taken place.

Computing

This experiment shows how easy it is to poison an open-weight AI model for under $100

This research raises new doubts about trusting open weight AI models.

Computer, Electronics, Laptop

Open-weight AI models have been having a moment lately. Just this month, Moonshot's massive Kimi K3 model landed close behind Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol in several benchmarks, all while remaining fully open-weight and downloadable by anyone.

However, Katie Paxton-Fear, a cybersecurity lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and staff security advocate at Semgrep, managed to poison an open-weight model and proved how easily that openness can be turned against you (via The Register).