228 points | 32h ago | Discuss on Hacker News | Back to Radar
If you're interested in secret tunnels, check out Colin Furze on Youtube!
A small letter `m` would be for milli, aka 10^-3, if it is suffixed by a unit. A `m` alone is the SI unit for length. A capital `M` is the prefix for Mega, aka 10^6.
Please use the normalized units. The starting price for this auction is 300 k£ or about 400 kUS$.
The story about him in Time at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20080521163217/http://www.time.c...
For Cray, the excavation project is more than a simple diversion. "I work when I'm at home," he recently told a visiting scientist. "I work for three hours, and then I get stumped, and I'm not making progress. So I quit, and I go and work in the tunnel. It takes me an hour or so to dig four inches and put in the 4-by-4s. Now, as you can see, I'm up in the Wisconsin woods, and there are elves in the woods. So when they see me leave, they come into my office and solve all the problems I'm having. Then I go back up and work some more."
> In psychology, incubation refers to the unconscious processing of problems, when they are set aside for a period of time, that may lead to insights. It was originally proposed by Graham Wallas in 1926 as one of his four stages of the creative process: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification.
> ...
> The experience of leaving a problem for a period of time and then finding that the difficulty evaporates on returning to the problem, or, even more striking, that the solution "comes out of the blue" when thinking about something else, is widespread. Many guides to effective thinking and problem solving advise the reader to set problems aside for a time.
That traditionally would be described as “a maze of twisty little passages, all alike”
I'm waiting for his house to come up on auction in ~50 years or so when he eventually kicks the can. Will certainly be interesting to see how that auction goes, with the entire process being documented so well.
"The unique complex contains more than 1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms - and even a hand-built railway."
(Edit: I mean the original article, not the submission)
that’s ~ 45 ft underground, I believe … perhaps not that impressive, but quite funny since I would hesitate to undermine my own house and surely this makes it worth less
I'm joking, but it's heartening to see quirky hobbies by qualified people (he was a civil engineer).
Unfortunately, whimsy and safety are often in conflict with one another.
To you it will. To the next buyer it's a liability. In a world where paying off a mortgage was a possibility, this was fine. Now you're beholden to the median desires of the real estate market with every decision you make on your house.
ⓐ: A financial asset where you landlord yourself, always worrying about the valuation by others. Think rectiliniar greige.
ⓑ: Your home, lived in and modified to your wants and whimseys. Often over or under capitalized.
The first home we buy is usually a financial instrument type ⓐ.
If you can buck your initial programming/conditioning, you can get ⓑ with effort and luck.
For elderly people a big house can be a liability. It makes a lot of work and you don't need it once the children move out.
A big house is sold to people as an investment in future value (ⓐ).
More importantly a big house is often driven by a not-so-hidden desire to show off to others a massive status symbol (a tragic McMansion), and high status is also ⓐ.
Of course a big house can be ⓑ: but it is less common to see crazy money spent on large whims (assuming having enough wealth to be able to burn pointless dollars).
Sorry if I'm mansplaining - but I just don't understand why you'd say something so obvious, while implying something so disconnected.
A ⓑ house can have a high valuation. The thesis of the dichotomy is about intent, not about outcomes. And we often have mixed intents so it isn't as black&white as I stated it.
£50 to a spat out smartie says that was done in the 1960's, when the fashion was for everything to look smooth and modern.
We had a home with marvelous 1830's wooden panneling that was hidden behind thin sheets of plywood (presumably in the 1960's) that had been nailed over it to provide a smooth look.
https://www.aol.com/articles/unassuming-bungalow-hides-netwo...
I used to live in the inner city of Leipzig during my university days, and we had a door in the basement that led to wartime tunnels connecting it to other houses. It wasn't like a massive maze, just a hub with three other paths, each leading to another house nearby. From there, however, if they'd unlocked their doors, you could travel farther.
I was on a mission back then to befriend and convince random neighbours across the street to open their access doors and get some kind of network going, but I didn't meet with much enthusiasm.
fwiw I just threw this in since many on HN probably don’t know much about Reading
red face
>many on HN probably don’t know much about Reading
Maybe it is better that way. ;0)
Edit: By the by I do intend to visit again at some point if only to see the DEC exhibition at the town museum (if that's still on) and perhaps swing by Sweeney's pie shop (if that's still open).
Oh, and now I see from a sibling comment that there was another bid in 2022! It gives me a twinge of national pride that British rules on City-hood are so weird!
Sweeney Todd is still open :)
"In the end, the 2022 contest saw Reading beaten to the post by Dunfermline, Bangor, Douglas, Doncaster, Wrexham, Colchester, and nearby Milton Keynes. "
https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/25782760.reading-not...
A lot of sources seem to cite Reading as 'England's largest town' but maybe that is by area, rather than population? Also depends on where you put the boundary.
That's where the problem lies. I spend too much of my life screaming into the void about UK addresses and what is and isn't a town :)
It's just about possible to create dataset of towns, cities, villages from mixing and matching and cutting up other geographies from the ONS (e.g. their Parished and Unparished data (though Unparished is its own nightmare), then the ONS Built-Up Areas dataset but... that one cuts out all the non-built parts so Milton Keynes is bunch of big blobs around the residential areas).
But if you frankenstein it, you lose all of the formal connections that define other links, and if you try to cheat via geospatial join, you will link police forces to areas they don't actually serve.
For Swindon, you're kinda stuck glueing together (going from memory here - please correct me if I'm off) the Parishes of Central Swindon, South Swindon and West Swindon. But these will overlap with some villages so it's not a true count.
And that's a natural moment to lead on to the next critical point: how're we measuring population? (I always get that Father Ted speech scene in my head thinking about this, start speaking - then twelve hours later "And now, we move on to liars")
The UK census seems as good a measure as any.
Agreed, and it's a reasonable first reach for residential counts.
Problem is, it was last taken during 2021 - at the height of covid - and their estimates have been paying the price of it even since. Anything that touches on workday or employment they actively warn you away from, nowadays.
But then there's the elephant in the room: what if you're looking at somewhere like the City of London (the square mile one) where residential population is somewhere between 8,500 and 9,000 people?
EDIT: it slipped by me!
There is no single UK-wide census. NRS do Scotland's, last in 2022. NISRA handle Northern Ireland's census, last in 2021. And the ONS for England and Wales, last in 2021.
The whole city status thing is a bit silly. It should definitely be based on more than population, but Milton Keynes getting it firmly established population is all it takes now.
> convince random neighbours across the street to open their access doors
Would definitely work with kids. if there were a bunch of 10yo kids there would definitely be an underground kids mischief network.
https://znojmoregion.cz/cs/znojemske-podzemi-znojmo# (switch language to English)
Due to that, the Znojmo catacombs are always above the water table & there was never really issues with drainage. There are a couple natural springs and overflowing wells in the catacombs & they are drained by the so-called Jesuit aqueduct, that collects all the water and drains it into the moat of the city fortification system. Nowadays that part is also underground & it just flows in the the Dyje river.
So during an emergency, the could get rid of the sewage with the aqueduct outflow & store solid was in some sections not in use I guess.
https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/properties/20260...
EDIT: oops, forgot to select the 'Bungalow' filter too (ugh). 2 properties: £375k and £350k (very small, 60m2). Still...nothing detached around £300k
EDIT2: ohh auction...230m2...yeh won't go for £300k, way more
Detached sounds funny, as if the house was previously attached to another but not anymore. Like how you can only be divorced or widowed after being married to someone.
I once came across a middle-of-nowhere midwestern house auction listing by the US government. It came with a detached 5-vehicle garage, and an attached multistory underground hole I assumed was a missile silo. I can't remember the exact starting price, but it was significantly lower than $400k IIRC.
It'll start out at £300k (to market it attractively) and end up selling for £500k+.
"Real" liability of the "if something happens I'm on the hook" kind is not what's driving down the value here. What's driving down the value is that now that there's a bunch of pictures floating around the internet the tunnels are worthless because some government inspector could choose on a whim to force you to fill them in at your expense (which you would presumably fight, expensively, in court).
You can get these types of things sorted (eg apply for retroactive planning permission) and the council will send a surveyor and give you an opinion but you are running the risk that they insist you either make it good (remedy anything they don't think was done right) or (worst case scenario) tell you to put it back like it was before the unpermitted work was done. This happens more often than people think.
That's why the house has been reduced in price so much - to find someone who feels like the headache is worth it. I have my doubts to be honest.
However, I think you're right that no bank will lend. They expect only a cash buyer who can "regularise" it and sell it on at considerable expense. Hence the price.
Apparently they have planning permission approved already to build houses on this land.
Perhaps they split the previous house out into its own plot and sold it separately.
It looks quite clear that they have split/subdivided their plot. In Australia this would be called a battle-axe property. The listing talks about "land associated with 123 Street Address".
They are basically selling off the far back garden of the main house. A long thin access road, the pool, the glasshouse/conservatory, the workshop, the tunnels, and the planning permission.
https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/properties/20260...
It includes many more photos than the article, as well as floor plans for the subterranean areas
Even then, it might be far cheaper to build an "EMP resistant" structure aboveground.
Admittedly you don't expect to see one in a random suburb.
There's a story, not sure how true it is, of a contractor being brought in to renovate a recently-vacated government office building of something like 7 storeys. They came back and said "OK, we've looked at the 7 storeys above ground, what about the three below ground?" / "What 3 storeys below ground? There aren't any below ground".
Then everyone acted surprised when entire streets started sinking, or whole buildings collapsed into the ground: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/03/london-stree...
Tunnels and basements just trap it so it can't blow away.
The chalk bedrock in Reading isn't generally susceptible to radon.
UK radon mapping data: https://www.ukradon.org/information/ukmaps
[Looks at interior photos]
Ah. Anyway.
Curious how he got planning permission. Or if he got planning permission.
Why is it for sale?
The OG tunnel influencer is, of course, Colin Furze: https://www.youtube.com/@colinfurze
The weird part is her onlyfans-style alternate account which is kind of strange...
And she had to do a lot to get it permitted and set back up.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's BS but I also don't think makeup and fingernails are the smoking gun.
They sure know their target audience - online prepper crowd
https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/news/going-under...
It is kinda nice to be copying based because it's highly reliable (against paywalls, blocking, IP bans, .onion services and other domain name thingies). It would be cool if there was some sort of reputation system. Obviously on top of the promise above.
Archive.today is great, except for the Google captcha. It's no small feat to run an archiving service especially against copyright law–the archive.today guy seems a bit crazy–I still have mad respect for him.
Something that the people who keep submitting these links get wrong, is on Hacker News you're supposed to submit the original link and then the archive / bypass in the comments. Hacker News is not against against Nongraph or something, most archive.today mirrors are also banned for post submissions.
The YouTube video is insane
My grandfather had a kind of similar situation in Genk, Belgium where he bought a house and discovered a whole basement system that spanned a good part of the neighborhood.
She is a unique person. She knows tons about engineering, concreting etc but then just did a pivot into streaming e-girl.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/lifestyle/tiktok-tunnel-gir...
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