Because Bredemarket is dangerously close to becoming the tire product marketing expert, I wanted to share an excerpt from a May Tire Review article by David Sickels entitled “Are These Tire ‘Quick Fixes’ Worth It?”
“For repair shops, the value of tire quick fixes often depends on communication as much as the repair itself. Explaining what the repair addresses and what it does not address helps customers understand possible outcomes before the vehicle leaves the shop.”
Google Gemini.
This post is not only about tires. Explain the pros and cons of any alternative. Nothing is perfect.
“The Bitter Bargain.” Google Gemini/Lyria. Public Domain.
“They told you to learn to code. You did. They told you to upskill. You did. They told you to embrace AI. You did. Then they used the system you helped build to replace you.“
“In a statement, Gov. Greg Abbott welcomed Oracle’s relocation to Texas and credited the state’s business-friendly climate, low taxes and strong workforce for what he called the “tidal wave” of businesses relocating to Texas.”
Of course, even before everyone not named Ellison at Oracle was replaced by a bot, Texas found out that it wasn’t the big winner after all.
“In 2021, a Tennessee panel approved $65 million in state incentives for Oracle, with the company planning to bring 8,500 jobs and an investment topping $1 billion to Nashville over a decade. Then-Mayor John Cooper’s office announced that the company, currently based in Austin, Texas, planned to build the new campus with 1.2 million square feet (111,400 square meters) of office space….
“Frist, a doctor and businessman, asked Ellison why Nashville was chosen. Ellison, whose company bought electronic medical records company Cerner in 2022, called the city “a health center.”
“”We’re moving this huge campus, which will ultimately be our world headquarters,” Ellison said. “We’re moving that to Nashville.”
“Ellison then joked that he “shouldn’t have said that.””
But where will Oracle’s workforce (either bots or a return to flesh-and-blood) reside in 2028? Qatar? India? We’ll see.
You’ve probably noticed myrepeatedridicule of companies who ONLY talk about their use of AI. And my concurrent wonder about how car companies never talk about “tire intelligence,” or “TI.”
After all, tires are critically important to car companies, just as AI is critically important to tech companies. But car companies don’t hammer their prospects by interjecting “TI” into every conversation and advertisement.
So it’s time to delve into tires…and one important aspect of the tire industry.
“Retreading has been part of the commercial tire industry for decades, yet for some fleets, hesitation still remains.”
And for individuals. I am personally reluctant to buy a retread.
But Sailun, a tire manufacturer, believes my reluctance is outmoded.
“Concerns around safety, consistency, and durability are often rooted in outdated perceptions of how today’s retread process works. In reality, modern programs follow controlled, standardized procedures shaped by engineering, inspection protocols, and widespread industry adoption.
“Today, nearly 90% of large trucking fleets rely on retreads, and an estimated 44% of commercial truck tires currently in service are in their second life or beyond.”
For details on how some tires (cough, cough, Sailun) are ideally suited for retreading, read the article.
Now let’s delve into AI.
Your favorite LLM…and retreads
Is there an AI equivalent to retreads?
The question initially sounds silly. Every AI prompt is brand new.
But there’s a cost to always getting new responses. A huge cost.
“An anonymous AI consultant told Axios that one of its clients accidentally spent half a billion dollars in a single month because it never bothered to put a usage limit on employee access to Anthropic’s Claude. That is… a lot. Like to the point of straining credulity.”
Even big companies don’t have half a billion dollars to waste on tokens. They would have to fire EVERYBODY, including all their executives and their boards of directors, to fund that level of AI use.
But before a company does something as drastic as actually firing an executive, perhaps it could look at a “retread” strategy.
Take the knowledge gained from AI prompts and store it for future reference without requiring tokens to be burned.
(Bredemarket does this all the time, even though I’m not charged by the token.)
Admittedly the re-use (retreading) of old information lessens exposure to new, updated information. But if AI is getting dumber anyway, that’s a good thing.
Or, in official terms, Pope Leo XIV issued his first encyclcial.
An encyclical is a document issued by a Roman Catholic pope providing guidance upon an issue that affects church members…and frankly non-church members also.
They are officially entitled in Latin, although the text is translated into many languages. The title of the encyclicals issued by Pope Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, include
Pope Leo’s is called “Magnifica Humanitas” (English here).
Why would ID Tech, or Bredemarket, spend time discussing the writings of a Roman Catholic Pope?
Because the encyclical is subtitled as follows:
ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
That seems…relevant.
Because while we can consider artificial intelligence from technological and business perspectives, we can also certainly consider it from a moral perspective. And Pope Leo did, in a document numbered with 245 paragraphs. Let’s take a look at…um…the 95th one (heh):
“95. Here, we must recognize another crucial aspect, which I have noted earlier. In many cases within the digital context, control over platforms, infrastructure, data and computing power does not rest with States, but with major economic and technological actors. These entities effectively set the conditions for access, determine the rules of visibility and shape the very possibilities for participation. When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities.”
Why does Pope Leo care about tech bros? To answer that question we have to go to the beginning of the first paragraph.
“Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”
Google Gemini.
For those not familiar with the Bible, the Tower of Babel story in the Old Testament represents an episode in which, due to “stuff,” all the people of the world were divided and unable to talk to each other. Pope Leo goes into more detail in paragraph 7:
“7. In order to answer these questions and discern how to navigate responsibly the era of AI, I would like to bring to mind two scenes from the Bible: the construction of the Tower of Babel (cf. Gen 11:1-9) and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem (cf. Neh 2–6). The story of Babel appears in the Book of Genesis, at the origins of humanity, immediately after the genealogies of Noah’s sons. After settling in a plain in the land of Shinar, the people decided to build a city and a tower “with its top in the heavens” (Gen 11:4). Fearing being scattered across the earth, they sought to guarantee stability and power for themselves, and above all to “make a name” for themselves. It was an impressive feat: a single language, a single technology, a single direction. However, the project concealed a profound danger. It was a project conceived without reference to God, supported by a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion. When a city is built on pride and the claim to self-sufficiency, communication breaks down, languages are confused and people no longer understand each other. The result is not unity, but dispersion. Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency and aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing.”
If you strip the Tower of Babel episode from its religious trappings, it describes the pursuit of technology for technology’s sake, not necessarily benefiting the people and their needs. (Actually, their diverse needs.)
Most people agree that sacrificing human dignity for efficiency is undesirable regardless of your religious beliefs or lack thereof.
Pope Leo isn’t the only religious leader sounding a warning
Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has also spoken on the topic.
“Increasingly, AI influences how we perceive real and unreal; the relationships we hold most important; the ways we work and organize society. We know AI needs stable character for moral judgment. Highly capable algorithmic reasoning is not human intelligence. AI systems will manifest admirable human values and judgment only as we imbue AI personas with such. Questions transcend technology. We need trust, safeguards, and goodwill as we work through competing values and priorities regarding AI.
“A high-stakes public conversation is opening. Publics want AI to be used safely, ethically, transparently—for children, others who are vulnerable, and citizens concerned for community costs and uses of water, electricity, and land, and for continuing impacts on jobs, education, and opportunity.”
And Elder Gong also addressed the tech bros.
“Beyond the speed and scope of AI disruption is another unprecedented challenge: AI is concentrating information, technology, and capital and thereby centralizing power. Concentrated, centralized power infringes freedom. It undermines the sovereignty of individuals, companies and countries. The complexities of data (including autonomy, integrity, privacy, security, sovereignty) and intellectual property (including creativity, ownership, provenance) further complicate individual, company, and country independence.”
Considering the history of this church as a minority group often facing persecution, it fears (from its perspective) being shut out of the international conversation.
“These developments underscore the need for pluralistic faith and ethics AI evaluation benchmarks and moral compass in AI. Pluralistically portraying faith traditions accurately, honestly, and respectfully does not privilege one faith tradition over another, or belief over nonbelief. It does not seek to convert individuals. It does not adjudicate faith claims. Pluralistically benchmarking faith and ethics in AI is not an imposition of religion on AI.”
Do you see the repeated references to “pluralistic” here?
We don’t want an LDS AI, or a Catholic AI, or a Tech Bro AI, or any other narrowly-defined AI. That would be catastrophic.
“Despite its undeniable impact on all of us, artificial intelligence is just a feature. Like the Pentium, or Corinthian leather.
“And it’s a feature that everyone has. Not a differentiator at all.
“To say your software is AI-powered is like an automotive company saying their cars have tires.
Google Gemini.
“How many times do you see Ford or Toyota saying their cars have tires?
“They don’t waste their time talking about something that everyone has.
“And you shouldn’t waste your time talking about your AI feature.”
But people continuously talk about AI anyway. And in parallel, a bunch of free newsletters and not-so-free courses are offering to teach you everything about AI.
“But I took the initiative and educated myself about TI. I subscribed to a free weekly newsletter that covered all the aspects of TI in detail. Frank, I’ll Slack you the link and within a week you’ll know more about TI than Ethan!”
In case you missed it, “TI” stands for “tire intelligence.”
But a funny thing happened when I wrote that post.
I linked to a REAL free newsletter on tires.
Tire Review is a real website that offers a variety of free weekly e-newsletters that are all about tires. But for the record, Tire Review does NOT believe that tire intelligence is the nexus of the most significant advance of the last 100 years.
And I ended up subscribing to it, even though I am not in the tire business (although I am a user) and the chances of Bredemarket acquiring a tire client are very low…but not zero.
So without further ado, here’s Bredemarket’s take on tire sidewall stiffness, based upon this Tire Review article.
To understand this, you need to remember that a driver’s connection to the road is based upon the connection between the road and the four (or eighteen) tires (“contact patches”) on the vehicle. These contact patches are essential, a point that Amanda Sorensen makes in another Tire Review article.
“You’re feeling everything in your body, and the craziest part to think about is that at the end of the day, it comes down to the four contact patches that are on the ground and what you’re feeling as the tires are feeding information through the speed of the car.”
Back to the sidewall discussion.
“Most drivers focus on tread design, tread wear or overall tire appearance. However, sidewall stiffness also plays a major role in how a tire feels and performs on the road.”
So what do stiff sidewalls do?
“Tires with greater sidewall stiffness flex less during operation. As a result, the tire reacts more quickly when the driver turns the steering wheel.
“Drivers may notice sharper steering response during lane changes or cornering. Many drivers associate that quicker response with improved control and stability.”
But steering sharpness comes at the expense of comfort. If you want a smoother ride, you need softer sidewalls.
So in the same way that biometric vendors tune their systems to minimize either false positives or false negatives, “[t]ire manufacturers tune sidewall stiffness to match specific driving priorities such as comfort, handling, stability or load support.”
I intentionally waited two days to write this. Let’s pick up the story from Monday.
Monday afternoon
The second technician arrived at my house and ended up replacing ALL the cabling between the utility pole and the (new) modem. Among other issues, there was water in the cable. And I don’t need to be a coaxial product marketing expert to know that water in a cable is not a good thing.
Oh yeah: coaxial. Because my internet network is NOT a fiber network. It’s a hybrid network that starts as fiber, but then becomes coaxial for “the last mile.”
And this is relevant, because even after he re-cabled everything, he said there was an amplifier issue down the street. If I had been on fiber, there would be no need for a nearby amplifier.
And no, he wasn’t talking about a Spinal Tap amplifier.
I prompted Google Gemini for an explanation of network amplifiers, but I’m not going to reprint it here. Suffice it to say that the ISP needed to perform some work, but it wasn’t customer-facing work, was apparently super-secret work, and I would never be informed when the work was done. I was then told that if I still had problems on Friday (4 days later) NOT to contact the ISP’s regular support line, but to instead call his boss directly.
The tech restarted the modem at 2:55 pm.
He left at 3:13 pm.
My wi-fi went down at 3:29 pm.
Tuesday
It had been a week since my wi-fi started failing, And since the second technician had left on Monday afternoon, the wi-fi hadn’t stayed up for more than 45 minutes at a time. I finally gave up trying.
Then I disobeyed instructions.
Early Tuesday morning I texted “the boss.” No answer.
Then I called the boss. No answer.
By early afternoon I contacted my ISP, but not for customer support. I called the “Retention Department.” Yeah, the department that you call to cancel your service.
The man I spoke to had no visibility into the scheduling of our local amplifier repair, but he promised someone would call me back within the hour.
A woman called me 20 minutes later. She had no visibility into the super-secret amplifier repair schedule either.
She asked if the second technician had reported the issue to maintenance or construction. I didn’t know. Turns out this is critical information; if construction had to get involved, city permits would be required before construction could even begin. Who knows how long that would take.
But she had a solution.
Send a third technician out.
Have the third technician tell me whether they would report the issue to maintenance or construction.
If it was maintenance, then the super-secret group would perform maintenance. Maybe by Friday. Maybe later.
I kept my mouth shut, but this sounded like a colossal waste of time. As you will see, it wasn’t.
After I got off the phone I made a decision. Since this problem was going to persist until the ISP fixed it—or I got a new ISP—I was going to have to work around it. So I set up a TV table in front of the love seat next to the modem, then moved my laptop to the TV table. That way if my laptop lost wi-fi I could immediately restart the modem, and hopefully my laptop soul reconnect to wi-fi and I wouldn’t lose anything.
So here’s how THAT worked out:
Tuesday afternoon 2:01 pm: Set up laptop near the modem.
2:21 pm: I lost wi-fi while submitting an online form.
2:26 pm: After a modem restart, successfully submitted the online form.
2:44 pm: I lost wi-fi while in mail.
2:50 pm: After a modem restart, I refreshed my mail tab and everything appeared.
5:30 pm: By this point I had enjoyed uninterrupted wi-fi for over two hours. I had stopped working on my laptop and was writing a Bredemarket blog post on my phone (like I am doing right now).
5:50 pm: I lost wi-fi and restarted the modem.
6:03 pm: There was an election in the city of Ontario that day, so I left the house to vote.
6:30 pm: By the time I returned, the wi-fi was down.
A pain, but I could limp along. But by that time I was done working for the night.
Me for several days. Google Gemini.
Wednesday morning
After a few modem restarts during the night, I restarted it at 7:11 am and started working at 7:29. (Incidentally, I highly recommend Toggl Track.)
I got a lot of work done until 10:00 am, when I lost wi-fi while working on a file in OneDrive.
I restarted the modem and made sure OneDrive synced, then worked merrily along until losing wi-fi at 10:22 while working on a Bredemarket client PowerPoint.
I lost wi-fi again at 10:28.
And 11:09.
And 11:26.
But by that time the third technician was on his way.
Wednesday afternoon
I was under the impression that the third technician would climb the utility pole, check the signal-to-noise ratio issue on the amplifier (but he called it a node rather than an amplifier), and go from there.
But that isn’t what he did. He brought his test equipment into the house and started running the (new) modem and (new) router signals through the test equipment.
But he had some news for me.
“The node has improved already, so someone has been here.”
So the super-secret people had completed their mission. Now what?
The technician kept testing. 20 minutes later:
“Coax looking good.”
He was mostly testing in the house, but also testing in the backyard and running to his truck. Ten minutes later:
“The signal’s good.”
Eventually I noticed that he had grabbed a new modem from his truck, but I assumed it was only for testing.
By 12:59 he had to leave for his state-mandated lunch break, but before he left he restarted the modem one more time. He said he’d check it when he returned from lunch.
So I ate lunch myself, although Bredemarket is not subject to state work break requirements.
When he returned at 2 the wi-fi was still up. That’s when he told me that he HAD replaced my new modem (which the ISP store gave me a week ago) with an even newer modem (from his truck). Apparently the connection from the utility pole to the coax cable end was fine, and the connection from the Ethernet cable end to the router was fine, but the new modem itself had issues that the even newer modem didn’t have.
He left, and the wi-fi went down…
…actually it didn’t. As I write this I have enjoyed wi-fi for over 50 hours without interruption.
I even moved my laptop back to the Bredemarket world headquarters.
And if you’ve read all the way to the end of this post, this is actually the SHORT version. Trust me.
The really short version
My summary of what happened between Tuesday March 17 and Wednesday March 25 between two ISP store visits, three technician visits, and countless support chats and calls:
2 modem replacements 3/18 (new modem), 3/25 (even newer modem).
1 router replacement 3/20 (not counting my second Google router 3/19).
2 cable replacements 3/23 (black cable from pole to southeast corner of house, white cable from there to modem in northeast corner of house).
1 apparent node fix (date unknown, maybe 3/24 or 3/25) to fix signal to noise ratio SNR issue.
And yes, this started with a modem replacement and ended (hopefully) with a modem re-replacement.
“[T]he technology is easy. The business part is the difficult part.”
But Chris Burt of Biometric Update phrased it more succinctly:
“[P]olicy chases modernization”
As Burt notes, examples of policy chasing modernization include:
Digital sovereignty, a topic of discussion with everyone from ID4Africa to an organization called the World Ethical Data Foundation. (As an aside, a Bredemarket client and I were recently discussing the pros and cons of managing digital identities in the cloud vs. peer-to-peer synchronization.)
Cybersecurity and digital identity, a topic of discussion in government (the White House, NIST) and industry (Jordan Burris of Socure).
Other topics, including police facial recognition policy. (Hmm…I recall that both government and vendor biometric policies were the topic of a Biometric Update guest article last year.)
All of you recall Pandora’s Box. I’ve used the story multiple times, including when discussing my creation of Bredebot and its nearly-instantaneous hallucinations. Yes, I do have “policies” regarding this “modernization,” including full disclosure.
For a day and a half my home Internet worked great.
Sunday morning my wi-fi started failing again, and my ISP is sending a second technician out to work on “signal issues.”
The remainder of this post is written by Google Gemini (but not as Bredebot).
I do not have the knowledge to detect if Gemini is hallucinating, so if anything seems off please comment.
Note how Gemini adopts a reassuring tone at the beginning of this passage, having been trained to know that someone asking such a technical question may be frustrated. It fakes emotion well.
Google Gemini on fiber network “signal issues”
(Written by Google Gemini)
It can be incredibly frustrating when your internet isn’t working and the fix feels like it’s being kicked down the road. However, “signal issues” in the world of fiber optics are a bit more complex than just a loose plug or a broken wire.
Here is the breakdown of what is happening behind the scenes and why a “balance” is necessary.
What are “Signal Issues”?
In a fiber network, data is transmitted as pulses of light through thin strands of glass. A “signal issue” occurs when that light doesn’t reach your router with the correct intensity or clarity.
Think of it like trying to read a book by flashlight from across a dark room. If the light is too dim (loss), too bright (saturation), or flickering (interference), you can’t read the words.
Common causes for signal degradation:
Micro-bends: A fiber cable that is pinched or bent too sharply.
Contamination: A single microscopic speck of dust on a connector can block the light path.
Attenuation: The natural loss of light intensity as it travels over long distances or through splitters.
Splice Failures: Where two fibers are fused together, a “cold” or imperfect weld can cause light to scatter.
Why does the line need to be “Balanced”?
Fiber networks (specifically GPON or Passive Optical Networks) are shared. One main fiber from the provider’s hub is split into many smaller branches that go to different houses.
“Balancing” is the process of ensuring that the light levels across these branches are within a specific “sweet spot.”
Signal too weak: The light is too faint for your ONT (Optical Network Terminal) to distinguish data from background noise.
Signal too strong: The light “blinds” the receiver (saturation), much like a camera flash being too close to your eyes.
The “Second Technician” logic
The first technician usually checks the “drop” (the line from the street to your house). If they find the signal is bad before it even hits your property, the issue is further “upstream”—likely at a splitter cabinet or a main distribution frame.
Balancing requires looking at the whole neighborhood’s light levels to ensure that fixing your signal doesn’t accidentally “starve” your neighbor’s connection or blow out their receiver.
Why it takes two visits
Often, the first tech is a residential installer who handles home wiring. The second tech is usually a network or “outside plant” technician. They have specialized equipment (like an OTDR—Optical Time-Domain Reflectometer) to “see” miles down the glass and pinpoint exactly where the light is leaking.
Bredemarket 