Piero Bosio Social Web Site Personale

5 Thurloe Square ("The Thin House"), London, UK, 2024.

All the pixels, each usable as a time travel machine in vintage British TV, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54192985864

#photography

Fun fact: the Reading was a major northeastern US railroad (made famous internationally by its place on the Monopoly gameboard), which ceded its rail business in 1976 to the newly formed Conrail consortium. But the company kept most of its non-railroad real estate holdings, and also operates cinemas (including NYC's Angelika) in several countries.

(The Reading Company was named for the Pennsylvania city, and so is pronounced with the past tense of what you do with words on a page).

The GX680 was a fun but very unusual camera that couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be. It was a truly gigantic beast of a medium format SLR camera providing (limited) view camera movements. It used 120-format roll film with a 6x8cm frame (so a 3:4 aspect ratio), with a built-in autowinder. It's sort of what you'd get if you somehow merged a Nikon F4, a Hasselblad, and a Crown Graphic. Definitely not a point & shoot camera.

Captured with a Fuji GX680 camera, 80mm lens, T-Max 100 film. Some tilt was applied to control focus. It was very dark in there, and focusing required the use of a flashlight.

The Pennsylvania Avenue Subway was built to provide a sub-grade freight connection between the Reading Railroad's main line and its "City Branch". It served the Baldwin Locomotive Works' Callowhill plant and, later, the Philadelphia Inquirer's printing plant, among other Center City industries. Abandoned in the 1980's.

"Pennsylvania Avenue Subway" Tunnel, Former Reading Railroad City Branch, Philadelphia, 2004.

#photography

@PizzaDemon I'm trying to explain the mechanisms at work here. If you don't find that of interest, no problem, but perhaps others will.

@eltonfc It's pronounced like "gif".

Also, this will re-ignite the long standing debate over how to pronounce the word "router".

There will undoubtably be a lot of hairsplitting over definitions here. What constitutes "foreign made"? Assembled overseas? Made of components from overseas? Running firmware written overseas? etc.

What the FCC has done here is added *all* foreign made consumer routers (that is, all consumer routers) to the "covered list" of national-security-threatening network gear, unless an exemption is obtained. See https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-278A1.pdf

Weirdly, they cite incidents like Salt Typhoon, which compromised carrier-grade equipment, not, as far as I know, consumer routers.

So the regulatory authority for the FCC here is rather indirect, kind of a backdoor.

They don't regulate the Internet Protocols or Internet security per se, but they do regulate most of the *equipment* that the Internet runs on (because almost everything uses RF-emitting processors that require FCC certification).

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@briankrebs/116280575943263005

You might wonder how it is the FCC regulates Internet routers. It's complicated.

First, FCC certification has long been required for virtually all microprocessor-equipped electronics, to ensure compliance with RF emission limits.

Then, in 2020, Congress enacted 47 USC 1601, the "secure networks act", which requires the FCC to maintain a list of networking equipment determined to pose risks to national security: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/1601

Equipment on the list can't receive FCC certification.

I met Robert Mueller several times when he was FBI director. We disagreed strongly about electronic surveillance policy, but there could be no doubt about his devotion to a mission that he took extremely seriously. No wonder Trump hated him; their concepts of public service and duty have no common ground whatsoever.

I was saddened by his decline as the Mueller investigation wound down. May he rest in peace.

@karlauerbach Maybe 10 years ago? It's new!

Captured with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digiron-W (@ f/6.3) lens. Phase One IQ4-150 back (@ ISO 50), Cambo WRS-5005 Camera (shifted vertically -22mm, pushing the limits of the lens). 16x9 crop.

This fire escape stairwell, recently retrofitted onto the back of Georgetown's Healy Hall, reminded me a bit of a Piet Mondrian painting. Hard afternoon shadows added to the abstract view.

Fire Escape, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2025.

All the pixels, no fire required to see them, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54481107849

#photography

Adding the Moynihan Hall was a welcome improvement to Penn Station, but didn't address the main problem, which is insufficient capacity for the number of trains that run through it. There aren't enough tracks, the platforms are too narrow, and the tunnels entering and leaving the station have too limited capacity. These more fundamental constraints will be much harder to solve, because the underground area around the station is already heavily crowded.

Moynihan Hall occupies part of what had been New York's main post office building, a block west of the original Penn Station. It was situated over the tracks, with access to platforms, to facilitate Railway Post Office mail delivery, which was common into the 1970's. After the post office moved its sorting operations elsewhere, it was relatively straightforward to repurpose it as an extension of the adjacent railroad station, which is why it only took the better part of 50 years to do.

Many of the design elements of the new hall pay deliberate homage to the original, befittingly grand, Penn Station, including especially the prominently exposed steel beams.

There are no seats in the main hall, though there are smaller ticketed waiting areas to the side, as well as a substantial food court. The lack of a "big board" is deliberate, to discourage crowding in any particular area (there is instead a collection of smaller train status monitors spread throughout the hall).

Captured with the Rodenstock 23mm/5.6 HR-Digaron lens and the Phase One IQ4-150 XT camera. The 23mm Digaron is a sharp wide lens, but doesn't really have a large enough image circle to support extensive movements (which weren't required here). Captured from the balcony on the south side of the station.

The Moynihan Train Hall is a recently-opened annex (repurposed from the Post Office) to the otherwise dungeon-like remnants of the old Penn Station, buried under Madison Square Garden since 1963.