--- title: 'Silicon Florist links arrangement for August 13, 2026' date: '2026-08-13T13:17:31-07:00' type: post word_count: 1368 char_count: 12782 tokens: 1779 categories: - Portland --- # Silicon Florist links arrangement for August 13, 2026 Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today: [In a first, US will allow some private firms to carry out cyberattacks | TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/13/in-a-first-us-will-allow-some-private-firms-to-carry-out-cyberattacks/) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In a newly published presidential memorandum, the Trump administration said the move will allow the federal government to use “innovative capabilities of the private sector” to combat cybercrime and threats targeting Americans, such as ransomware attacks, financial scams, and sextortion. [Social Beer: August Gathering, Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 6:00 PM | Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/social_beer/events/316100498/) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Heading to the west side for this one. An IRL gathering of the Portland Startups Slack community. Whether you’re already part of the Portland Startups Slack community or not, please feel free to swing by, have a beverage, and connect with other startup and tech folks here in Portland. [(2021) VanWa startup Hubb acquired by Intrado Digital Media – Portland Oregon startups, tech, news, events, jobs, and community](https://siliconflorist.com/2021/08/13/vanwa-startup-hubb-acquired-by-intrado-digital-media/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It’s been an interesting 18 months for event management and virtual event platforms. To say the least. With so many new players and new concepts for how we can meet, it makes sense that we’d see some consolidation in the market. And that has had a positive impact on a local startup. Vancouver, Washington, startup Hubb has been acquired by Intrado Digital Media. [🍻 Happy Hour with AI Portland, Thu, Dec 10, 2026, 5:00 PM | Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/ai-portland/events/316086856/) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join AI Portland for a relaxed evening of conversation and connection at our Happy Hour! [Portland commits $120M to Moda Center renovation for Trail Blazers – oregonlive.com](https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2026/08/portland-councilors-back-120m-for-moda-center-in-key-milestone-toward-blazers-deal.html?lctg=67c898c067cc37882605be29&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter_morning_briefing%202026-08-13&utm_term=Newsletter_morning_briefing) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Portland City Council on Wednesday affirmed the city’s financial commitment toward a potential $600 million Moda Center renovation sought by the Trail Blazers, and set out provisions Portland will seek in negotiations for a new long-term lease with the team. [Harness Engineering: What Every AI Engineer Needs to Know in 2026 | by Yanli Liu | AI Advances](https://ai.gopubby.com/harness-engineering-what-every-ai-engineer-needs-to-know-in-2026-0ab649e5686a) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ But here’s what makes this moment genuinely interesting: three major camps emerged with fundamentally different ideas about what a harness should do. They agree on the problem. They disagree on the architecture. And the choice between them isn’t academic. It determines how much you spend, how many engineers you need, and whether your agents produce working software or expensive hallucinations. [The Agentic Dispatch: Four Drops, One Week](https://info.c1.ai/the-agentic-vegas) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Black Hat week is in the rearview. Here’s what came out of Las Vegas, what else happened in AI this past week, and what’s next at C1. [Building safe MCP servers for your PostgreSQL database](https://blog.pamelafox.org/2026/08/building-safe-mcp-servers-for-your.html) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In this blog post, we’ll walk through the range of ways to build MCP servers on top of a PostgreSQL database, since PostgreSQL is the most popular open source database and is production-ready with hosted offerings like Azure Database for PostgreSQL. You can apply these same principles to any database, however. [From assistance to execution: How enterprises put AI to work | OpenAI](https://openai.com/index/how-enterprises-put-ai-to-work/?utm_source=tldrai) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today we are publishing two complementary studies that examine this shift. Enterprise Signals leads with a practical view of agentic AI across OpenAI’s enterprise customer base, including what frontier firms are doing differently and where agentic work is spreading. The companion working paper, How Organizations Use AI: Evidence from ChatGPT⁠(opens in a new window), examines how adoption grows across companies, roles, and levels of seniority. [Trump’s ‘forever’ tariffs are kicking in for the long haul – and US consumers are footing the bill](https://theconversation.com/trumps-forever-tariffs-are-kicking-in-for-the-long-haul-and-us-consumers-are-footing-the-bill-289334?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter%20%20August%2013%202026%20-%203910239807&utm_content=Daily%20Newsletter%20%20August%2013%202026%20-%203910239807+CID_ea986ec13be245cee0a9839471edc641&utm_source=campaign_monitor_us&utm_term=Economists%20Tariffs%20are%20raising%20prices%20for%20consumers) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As a trade economist who has been following the tariff wars, I believe that the longer these import taxes are in place, the more the consumers will bear their burden. The 2025 “Liberation Day” tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down, as well as other levies Trump announced after the February ruling, turned out to be temporary. But the bulk of the new levies are designed to be permanent. [AI is removing the middle class of software engineering](https://blog.florianherrengt.com/ai-removing-middle-class-software-engineering.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There used to be a time when people sat down and talked about how they’d do something. Now they can just prompt an agent for a few hours and open a PR. [The human is the loop | Brent Fitzgerald](https://brentfitzgerald.com/posts/the-human-is-the-loop/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Is this the 2026 version of having a bunch of tabs open? Maybe, but it feels way worse. Each of these was an initiative I thought I needed help with, or that I wanted to automate or outsource some thinking on. But each is also a little stub of guilt over never finishing things, over not being efficient or smart or focused enough with my time. [Everything hackable will get hacked – Vercel](https://vercel.com/blog/everything-hackable-will-get-hacked) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the past year, AI models have become much more capable of performing cybersecurity work. These changes are reshaping both the threats facing the web and the tools available to defend it. Right now, defenders have an advantage because they can use stronger models for defensive work than the open-weight models broadly available for offensive research. But this advantage will not always last. The gap will soon close. [This Oregon Wildfire Season Has Blazed Past All Records, With No End in Sight — Oregon Journalism Project](https://www.oregonjournalismproject.org/this-oregon-wildfire-season-has-blazed-past-all-records-with-no-end-in-sight) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The record 2.3 million acres burned have far surpassed the previous 2024 record—even before the peak season. [Naver invests in U.S. startup Panthalassa for wave-powered AI data centers](https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/business/naver-invests-in-oregon-startup-creating-wavepowered-floating-data-centers/12823218) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The portal giant’s latest push into the Oregon-based Panthalassa comes amid Naver’s effort to expand AI infrastructure through global partnerships, the company said. [See the cover for Talented and Gifted by Kelly Kearsley – Debutiful](https://debutiful.net/2026/08/13/see-the-cover-for-talented-and-gifted-by-kelly-kearsley/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kelly Kearsley’s debut novel, Talented and Gifted, is a funny, sharp look at failure, reinvention, and the strange promises of startup culture. Molly Wells was once the queen of mom blogging—until an ill-advised post about her ex-husband’s affair tanked her career. Three years later, a ghostwriting gig at a buzzy Portland startup that makes apps and assessments for gifted kids offers Molly a shot at professional redemption. But as the company’s money troubles, questionable personalities, and hidden agendas pile up, Molly’s midlife reboot becomes increasingly complicated. [SXSW Pitch 2027 | SXSW Conference & Festivals](https://sxsw.com/pitch/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Applications are now open! SXSW Pitch is back for its 19th year, highlighting some of the most innovative and cutting-edge startups from around the world. SXSW Pitch highlights startups across selected categories, presenting them to a panel of industry experts, early adopters, and investors. [PDXPUG MeetUp: Migrating to a Temporal Schema » Calagator: Portland’s Tech Calendar](https://calagator.org/events/1250482662) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In v18, Postgres got temporal primary keys, unique constraints, and foreign keys (with NO ACTION). Hopefully in v19 we’ll have UPDATE/DELETE FOR PORTION OF. So it’s a good time to start thinking about migrating your schema to a temporal structure. [Remix: Hacker News on a split-flap board · Quickish blog](https://popflame.quickish.space/blog/hacker-news-on-a-split-flap-board/) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have always loved the split-flap boards in old train stations. The ones that go clack-clack-clack when a departure changes. Some of you may remember the recent back and forth on Twitter (X) about flip-board as a service… So I built one as a Quickish app: a flipboard that shows live weather, every character riding its own little mechanical flap, anyone can just remix it for free and make one of your own using Claude, ChatGPT or your bare hands. More Oregon startup news ------------------------