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  • Hacker News
  • The cost of planning the alternative route hasn't been published anywhere yet AFAIK, although it's non-trivial to estimate.
    by OgsyedIE
  • Spoiler alert geesh
    by enos_feedler
  • Dobby dies?! Spoilers!
    by wez_official
  • Actual article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/10/harry-po...

    Podcast where this is all from, "Can We Connect the World's Electricity Grids? with Simon Ludlam" (google it for apple/spotify/etc links)

    by nomel
  • Truth. There was never any attempt to route it over that grave.

    https://backofmind.substack.com/p/chortle-on-a-chortle

    by mrlonglong
  • https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Dobby's_grave

      Many fans have visited the beach to lay painted rocks, several crosses, and many socks in Dobby’s memorial. However, as the memorabilia has had a negative effect on the environment, the beach asks that visitors just interact with the site by taking photos.[4]
    Note: there is currently no indication of this controversy in the article. Anyone who holds an account on Fandom could check through the history and diffs, for any revision since 2019 that would indicate someone tried to add information about the undersea cable or the alleged row.
    by ButlerianJihad
  • This is a rehash of the Guardian article (submitted here yesterday with no traction), which should the the link:

    Harry Potter fans force relocation of £430m undersea cable to avoid Dobby’s ‘grave’

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/10/harry-po...

    by mellosouls
  • Reminds me of this classic article from Michael Lewis:

    > Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called "hidden people"-or, to put it more plainly, elves-in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, "we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people."

    https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2009/4/wall-street-on...

    by dist-epoch
  • I'm trying the imagine the scenario where the government official reports that elves have been found. On what evidence?
    by red_admiral
  • If it's a legal requirement to have the government check for hidden people before you do building, why do they need to hide the fact they did it? I'm not a Christian but I'm pretty sure I'd still need to deconsecrate a church before knocking it down
    by voidUpdate
  • If anyone doubts that popular media has at least somewhat taken the place of religion, here you go
    by scottLobster
  • And made the cable reroute through a Bronze Age burial site too...
    by seki285
  • it's a nice change that a big company suffers the result of an "organic hallucination" brought on by people associating the location with a fictional event; how do we make this happen to AI companies?
    by skeeter2020
  • Religion is, in fact, glorified fiction - so glorified that it's been declared a funda-mental right. Hilarious, I know!
    by penguin_booze
  • > The fans’ resistance to having Dobby’s “grave” desecrated seemingly prevented the undersea cable from going through the area. It was instead rerouted in an area that was close to some Bronze Age remains and urns, which, ironically, are associated with human burial.
    by Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0
  • TBF, human burial sites are a dime a dozen. There's relatively few locations associated with house elf remains.
    by Rebelgecko
  • > instead rerouted in an area that was close to some Bronze Age remains and urns

    To be fair, in the UK (and much of Europe) bronze age remains are everywhere. But there’s only 1 fictional Dobby grave.

    Like farmers will regularly dig up a bronze age thingamabob while plowing a field. For example [1], [2]. There’s a story like this every couple of years.

    [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/23/farmer-bronze-ag...

    [2] https://allthatsinteresting.com/rhubodach-scotland-bronze-ag...

    by Swizec
  • There is some skepticism about the veracity of this. Of course, be skeptical of the skepticism.

    https://bsky.app/profile/dsquareddigest.bsky.social/post/3ms...

    by mhb
  • The whole story is absolute nonsense.
    by drcongo
  • What we can say for certain is that the sole source of this claim is the project director for Greenlink, Simon Ludlam, and he made the claim as an anecdote on a podcast this week. The project's public consultations were in 2019.

    The anecdote starts at 16m55s: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-we-connect-the-wor...

    Non-British people might also like to know that the UK news media is in what's called the silly season, where they run any old nonsense as news because Parliament is in recess, the MPs are on their holidays, and there's a dearth of serious announcements to cover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_season

    by amiga386
  • > The National Trust, which owns the land, has previously warned pilgrims not to do so, as the area is ecologically sensitive, but it seems that people still do so.

    Ah okay, laying a few stones is ecologically sensitive, but if a billion dollar company wants to dig up the entire beach for a cable, that's not a problem.

    by gempir
  • Humanity collectively benefits by having electrical infrastructure so there can be more of us who can accomplish more things. I'm so sick of these effectively Original Sin arguments dressed up as pretending to care more about some fish or shore birds than about your fellow humans. I'm not sorry for existing, and I want lots of cheap power :)
    by Lammy
  • Yeah, isn't it crazy how that works?

    There's some open space near my house with a fenced off area saying to stay on trail to protect the ecosystem, but of course oil and gas companies can drive their trucks through to setup fracking rigs.

    by jlarocco
  • Maybe the company has at least made committments to restore it to the way it was after?
    by ceejayoz
  • Especially in the case of the UK which famously permits seabed trawling in the Marine "Protected" Areas.

    https://oceandesk.org/destructive-bottom-trawling-occurs-in-...

    We need heroes like this: https://planetwild.com/missions/21-underwater-sculptures-ita...

    by subscribed
  • I have literally never heard anyone associated with the environmental movement say:

    "This area is ecologically insensitive. I'm not too worried what you do here."

    Until they define some map or scale of what "ecologically sensitive" means, I put zero weight on that statement. It's meaningless. They say it about everything because it is their job to do so.

    by bpodgursky
  • Beaches are extremely dynamic environments and can heal in ways that other areas can't.
    by wbl
  • > Ah okay, laying a few stones is ecologically sensitive, but if a billion dollar company wants to dig up the entire beach for a cable, that's not a problem.

    The billion dollar company is monitored by ecologists and other professionals to make sure they build things according to environmental impact laws and follow their permits (e.g., after digging, restoring the top soil, etc).

    Randos moving and stacking stones, especially in large numbers, may alter habits for (small) animals and cause erosion:

    * https://www.ausableriver.org/blog/leaving-no-trace-rock-stac...

    * https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation...

    * https://www.nps.gov/articles/rockcairns.htm

    by throw0101a