Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
Columbia Sportswear CEO Boyle on Blazers, taxes, Portland – Portland Business Journal
What can Oregon do to become more business-friendly? You can’t rely on the serendipitous nature of Nike and Columbia and other businesses that were grown here. You can’t rely on lightning strikes that will save the state. You need to have people that are creating wealth and have created wealth that come here because it’s a great place to live and also stay here.
(2013) What a difference a year makes: Simple recounts its first year with customers on the platform – Portland Oregon startups, tech, news, events, jobs, and community
Portland-based Simple has a very lofty goal: to build a better banking experience. Or to be more blunt: to build a bank that doesn’t suck. And after a year with customers using the platform, Simple appears well on their way to satisfying that goal.
‘I wouldn’t call it panic’: Industry quails at Hochul’s data center pause – POLITICO
The executive order that Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed Tuesday marks the first state-level pause on data center construction, following dozens of municipalities in red and blue states that have passed similar moratoriums. But industry supporters and detractors alike say it’s unlikely to be the last, amid poll numbers showing growing public skepticism toward AI.
26 Meta employees sue, alleging AI-driven layoff picks hit workers on medical and parental leave
As a result, people on protected medical or family leave were disproportionately selected for layoffs, the lawsuit says. Each of the 26 anonymous employees in the lawsuit took protected leave and requested or received a reasonable accommodation for disability. Though they have been notified of their layoffs, all 26 remain employed by Meta, with separations set to begin July 22.
New social media curfews and crackdown on addictive features to better protect 16- and 17-year-olds online
Default overnight curfews from midnight to 6am will be switched on for 16 and 17-year-olds on social media apps, as the government takes further action to back parents and protect the next generation online.
Intel first to use ASML High NA EUV in mass chip production
Intel took delivery of its first High NA machine in 2024, installing it at the Hillsboro, Oregon campus where the company conducts its advanced process research. Intel Foundry was also the first company to install and accept the second-generation system, the TWINSCAN EXE:5200B, which improves on the original EXE:5000 with higher output, better overlay accuracy, and an upgraded light source, the company said.
Inside Anthropic’s state-by-state plan to ratchet up AI rules – POLITICO
The approach stands in stark contrast to the one favored by the company’s archrival, OpenAI, which has pushed state lawmakers toward common ground on regulating the breakthrough technology.
Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
After I mentioned a Jurassic Park anecdote the other day, I watched the movie again. I must have seen it at least ten times now. This time, I researched every computer/software I spotted.
NBA Commissioner Says Blazers Arena Deal ‘Seems to Have Gone Off Track’
“I spent time with Tom and his partners here in Las Vegas,” Silver said, “and what we are most focused on right now, the league office, is the deal that we discussed when we were in Portland in March. I was hoping more progress would’ve been made by now on that agreement, and it seems to have gone off track in various ways. I have a colleague who’s day-to-day on it, but we are working with both sides to ensure that the Trail Blazers can have a long-term future in Portland. But there are several open issues that still need to be resolved.”
The State of Open Source AI — V1.0 · July 2026
Our belief is simple: the path forward is competition and interoperability. We believe in a world of many models, standard ways to plug them together, and the freedom to walk away from any vendor at any time. Open has a record here. It grew the pie and let more people own a slice of it.
How to be grateful to someone – even when you really don’t want to
I’ve come to devote much of my research as a philosopher to studying how the way that we interpret each other as people shapes our relationships. That work has helped me to understand why I struggled to be grateful – and taught me a little bit about how to do better.
What is a Forward-Deployed Engineer (and Why Should You Care)? — Chris Neumann
Generally speaking, sending highly-specialized engineers from HQ into customer environments isn’t an optimal use of a company’s resources. Notwithstanding brief trips into the field to get “real-world experience”, product engineers are almost always more valuable working on the product than they are deploying and/or customizing it. That’s why the vast majority of technology companies build separate organizations (staffed with less expensive hires) for field engineering tasks.
Fintech Funding Surges 23% In H1 2026 As Investors Concentrate Their Bets On AI And Financial Infrastructure
All told, fintech startups raised $28.6 billion globally in the first half of 2026, a 22.7% increase from the first half of 2025, but down 17.3% compared to the $34.6 billion raised in the second half of last year. (It’s important to note that H2 2025 marked the strongest six-month funding period for fintech startups since the second half of 2022.)
You just hired a million bad employees. – by George Sivulka
We were told to sell pickaxes during a gold rush, and we built infrastructure. We were told to sell “Service-as-a-Software,” and we built neofirms. We have enough infrastructure. We have enough services. Now the work is making the trains run on time. It’s time to survey the enterprise: to find the 100X tokens, record the loops that work, and direct intelligence that is being massively wasted.
Product Market Fit is Hard to Find, but False PMF is Even More Painful | by Hunter Walk | Jul, 2026 | Medium
Still, as I read it, the sadist in me wanted to push the bar even higher and talk a bit about false PMF, which can sometimes be an even worse situation than no PMF (because you’re ramping up spend and activity, essentially running, with increasing speed, in a straight line towards a cliff.
I love LLMs, I hate hype | the singularity is nearer
What I don’t like is two things. One, this constant bullshit about some window closing, or the perpetual underclass, or falling hopelessly behind. This is negative valence hype, not only is it not true, it’s mostly designed to make you feel bad about yourself and move to shitty San Francisco where everything really does suck like how these people claim. And two, this strawman jump from, oh hey, it’s a fancy autocomplete, smart compiler, better search engine, to it’s gonna like own the whole light cone bro like if you aren’t in SF and at the right parties there’s gonna be like a flash of light in the sky one day and you’re not even gonna know what happened but everything just Changed.
Apple in talks with startup that shrinks AI models to run on an iPhone
The company’s approach could address one of the central constraints facing Apple’s AI strategy. The most capable models typically require too much memory and processing power to run on a smartphone.
Meta’s Adam Mosseri says AI token budgets could soon be capped per engineer | TechCrunch
“I think of it like…any other resource,” Mosseri said. “I have to decide how to deploy capacity to my different teams because I have a limited number of GPUs and CPUs and storage and RAM etc. I have to decide how to deploy OpEx for labeling budgets across my teams. I have to decide how to deploy payroll for headcount across my teams.”
The three doors | Vibes DIY Blog
We have been building a lot of event “picker” apps lately — one per conference or festival, each one a schedule you can heart sessions in, see what your friends are going to, and subscribe to as a live calendar. Pickathon first, then the same skin stamped onto DEF CON 34, JuliaCon, EuroSciPy, State of the Map, the Oregon Country Fair, IETF 126. The social machinery ports verbatim every time. The only real work in a new one is the feed adapter: teach the app to read this event’s schedule.
AI in the A.M. | Coffee at Instrument · Luma
We’re bringing AI in the AM to Instrument’s new space, with Deadstock running the espresso cart for the morning. Come for the usual: good conversation, no agenda, people who actually build and use this stuff. Stay because you’ve been curious what Instrument’s new space looks like and this is your excuse to see it.
