This week, the Austin American-Statesman is reporting that Armstrong has sold his 1.7-acre estate in Austin, Texas. The report stated that Al Koehler, the founder of Royalty Clearinghouse, has taken out a $3.1 million loan to purchase Armstrong’s estate, which includes a 7,850-square foot house.

Armstrong bought the estate in 2004 and renovated it, hanging his seven yellow Tour de France victory jersey’s on the walls of the house. The athlete also owns a home on Hawaii’s Big Island.

Armstrong was recently spotted in Los Angeles and is rumored to be in talks with movie studios over a biopic of his life. If the cyclist is planning a more permanent move to L.A., he could look into buying the infamous Playboy Bunny House, which just went up for sale and is located directly across the street from the Playboy Mansion.

Today, AT&T has announced intentions to build its own advanced fiber optic infrastructure “capable of delivering speeds up to 1 gigabit per second” in Austin, Texas.

No other details – like the when and how much – have been divulged. We’re guessing that AT&T will be unwilling to offer anything like Google Fiber’s free internet (with construction fee, of course). But as far as the pricing goes, it remains to be seen.

No surprise here, but AT&T makes a point to say that they don’t expect the project to “materially alter their anticipated 2013 capital expenditures.”

Also, AT&T expects to be given the same terms as Google in the city of Austin:

AT&T’s expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives.

Of course, all of this comes on the heels of Google’s announcement that they will be expanding their Google Fiber initiative to Austin in mid-2014. Google says the price will be similar to what it is in Kansas City, and that they will be giving the service free to public institutions like schools, libraries, and hospitals.

No matter what, this is great for the residents of Austin, who now have multiple companies looking to give them crazy fast internet. Some cities have all the luck.

“Today, we’re pleased to announce with Mayor Lee Leffingwell that Austin, Texas is becoming a Google Fiber city. It’s a mecca for creativity and entrepreneurialism, with thriving artistic and tech communities, as well as the University of Texas and its new medical research hospital. We’re sure these folks will do amazing things with gigabit access, and we feel very privileged to have been welcomed to their community,” says Google in a blog post.

Google hopes to begin construction in 2014, and will be asking neighborhoods about the service to determine the areas of the highest interest. That’s where they’ll start building first. Google hopes to get their first customers up and running by the middle of 2014.

Google says that they are still trying to work out pricing, but they think it will be similar to what’s happening in Kansas City: $120 a month for Gigabit internet plus TV, $70 a month for just the Gigabit internet, or free internet with a $300 one-time construction fee.

Public institutions within Austin are going to get the Google Fiber hookup for free. This includes schools, hospitals, libraries, and more – to be determined alongside the city of Austin.

“We believe the Internet’s next chapter will be built on gigabit speeds, and we hope this new Google Fiber city will inspire communities across America to think about what ultrafast connectivity could mean for them,” says Google VP of Access Services Milo Medin.

If you live in Austin, and want to sign up to be notified when you can sign up, check here.

Ars Technica reports that two analysts for Alliance Bernstein – Carlos Kirjner and Ram Parameswaran – have calculated the costs of bringing Google Fiber to most of the nation. Over five years, it would cost Google $11 billion, or four percent of its current net worth, to realize the dream of many across the nation.

So, why is Google Fiber so expensive? First and foremost, the infrastructure costs are astronomical. The main reason you don’t see many established ISPs upgrading their services is for this very reason. Upgrading infrastructure takes time and money – both of which most ISPs aren’t willing to sacrifice when most of their customer base is apparently happy with what they have.

The other major hurdle is of the regulatory kind. Google was lucky enough to get a range of perks from Kansas City, and Austin must be offering the same perks as well. Some cities may not be as kind, while other cities may have stricter regulations in place in regards to how utility poles, which are used to hang fiber wires, can be used.

In short, there are a number of obstacles standing in the way of nationwide Google Fiber deployment. The projected cost is definitely one of the main reasons, but there’s a number of others that Google must take into account before deciding to bring its service to another city.

That being said, relying on Google alone for Fiber is a fool’s game. There are other groups, like Gigabit Squared, that are working to bring Fiber to other cities across the nation. The FCC is also pushing for more gigabit networks across the nation.

Google didn’t start the Fiber craze, but it definitely helped give it some exposure. We can only hope that the move to Austin encourages more cities and organizations to start building out Fiber networks in other cities across the nation.

The news doesn’t come from Google of the city of Austin (yet), but rather a press release by Gig.U, a coalition of 30+ universities that promote ultra-high-speed brandband in the U.S.

“Gig.U congratulates Google and the City of Austin for their initiative to bring a world-leading network to one of the world’s great research university communities. This effort will pay enormous dividends for the country, as it will help develop the human capital America needs to lead a global economy that increasingly creates value with big data and big bandwidth,” says Gig.U Executive Director Blair Levin.

Earlier we told you that Google had inadvertently published a blog post stating that Google Fiber was in fact on its way to Austin. The post was quickly removed. Reports also indicated that Google was readying a launch event, and had sent out some invitations.

Austin will become the third location to get Google’s high-speed service – as right now it’s only available in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri. There’s no word yet on exactly when and how fast Google will be deploying the network in the city.

We’ll update with more information as we hear it.

[via Engadget]

The invitations for the event reportedly said:

On Tuesday, April 9, at 11 a.m., the City of Austin and Google will make a very important announcement that will have a positive impact on Austinites and the future of the city. We anticipate more than 100 community leaders and elected officials to be in attendance to celebrate this announcement. The event invitation is attached for your convenience. Although we cannot share the details of the announcement with you in advance, we know readers will want to learn more, so we encourage you to join us on Tuesday.

It appears that Google prematurely posted the news on its blog, before taking it down. Engadget reports (via a tipster) that the news section on the Google Fiber “Cities” page was showing “Google Fiber’s Next Stop: Austin, Texas”.

That is currently not showing up on the page. The latest Google Fiber news at this point is the April Fools’ joke about Google Fiber Poles.

I’m sure you’ve been following the saga that is the secessionist agenda playing out on the White House’s online “We the People” petition site. Starting one day after President Barack Obama was reelected to a second term, petitions began to appear on the site asking if specific states could “peacefully” leave the union to form their own governments. At first, it was only a couple states being represented – Texas and Louisiana. But it quickly grew to over 50 petitions representing nearly every state in the country.

In response, we saw new petitions created that sought to punish the secessionists and other that simply wanted to unify the country.

Now, in another hilarious wrinkle, the city of Austin, Texas has decided that they don’t want to go along with the rest of Texas (Texas’ secession petition is the most-popular on the site, with nearly 100,000 signatures). Some residents of Austin are formally requesting that they be allowed to “withdraw from the state of Texas & remain part of the United States.”

Here’s their reasoning:

Austin Texas continues to suffer difficulties stemming from the lack of civil, religious, and political freedoms imposed upon the city by less liberally minded Texans. It is entirely feasible for Austin to operate as its own state, within the United States, in the event that Texas is successful in the current bid to secede. It is important for Austin to remain in the union as to do so would protect it’s citizens’ standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers.

Like I’ve said before, these secessions petitions, anti-secession petitions, and modified secession petitions are simply serving to discredit the White House petition site, if it had any to begin with. Sure, there are some serious requests that at least deserve a response. But alongside the now 50+ secession-related petitions we have “Make the President attend a Fark.com party…if shceduling does not permit, at least have a beer with Drew Curtis” and “legalize crystal fucking weed.”

As of right now, a half-dozen or so of the secession petitions have hit the threshold (25,000 signatures in 30 days) and now demand an official White House response. That includes the secession requests for Texas (95,000), Georgia (27,000), Tennessee (25,000), North Carolina (25,000), Florida (28,000), and Alabama (26,000). I wonder if the White House will just tackle them all with one response or if they’ll just raise the signature threshold. Who knows? All I do know is that this has slowly but surely devolved into a sideshow.

I think we need a petition to get rid of this petition site and start over, what do you say?

“We are very pleased to have someone with Rich’s vast experience join us at Bethesda,” said Vlatko Andonov, president of Bethesda Softworks. “Rich has a history of building and managing talented development teams and bringing high quality games to market, and we look forward to working with him on a new exciting project.”

What exciting new project, could Andonov be referring to? Vogel’s game industry credits include plenty of MMO experience, including Ultima Online, Star Wars: Galaxies, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Bethesda has already announced The Elder Scrolls Online, an MMO set in Tamriel, where the company’s Elder Scrolls franchise games take place. Vogel’s MMO experience would suggest that Bethesda needs experienced talent to develop future MMOs. Could this mean an MMO version of Bethesda’s other huge franchise, Fallout, could soon be in development. It’s always possible, and Fallout fans have been clamoring for and speculating about a Fallout MMO for years.

Bethesda, through its parent company ZeniMax Media, already owns one game development studio in Austin. The company acquired French developer Arkane Studios in 2010, which has a branch in Austin. Arkane has just completed development on Dishonored, which will be released next week.

Officials are using social media to let all students and faculty know about the evacuation and are saying to stay as far away from the buildings as possible. While they haven’t divulged any details yet, many are wondering if the issue is a bomb threat, as Twitter updates have informed students that the buildings are still being checked/cleared.

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Evacuation due to threats on campus immediately evacuate all buildings get as far away from the buildings as possible. More to come.

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Buildings being checked/cleared. Stay away from buildings. No decision on afternoon classes/activities. Next update at 10:45am.

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UT has said updates will be given via Twitter as soon as they are available; we will also update this article with information as it comes.

The 8-foot statue of Nelson has been erected by the Moody Theater, and the artist, Clete Shields, says he wanted to give the musician a “timeless, ageless” look. The monument is intended to be a tribute to the man who has contributed so much to Austin and to the world of country music, as well as film; his songs have appeared in numerous movies, including “Shrek” and “Zombieland”. Nelson himself has made appearances on television and on the silver screen; one of his most famous cameos is from the Dave Chappelle cult classic “Half Baked”.

Nelson is famously pro-marijuana–having been arrested for possession of the drug several times–so the decision to hold the monument unveiling on a day which is nationally recognized as “weed day”, or a day to recognize those who support it’s legalization, seems rather cheeky. But the organizers insist it’s just a coincidence.