--- title: 'Silicon Florist links arrangement for September 2, 2026' date: '2026-09-02T12:52:07-07:00' type: post word_count: 1173 char_count: 10422 tokens: 1525 categories: - Portland --- # Silicon Florist links arrangement for September 2, 2026 Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today: [Check if files were made with Claude | Claude](https://claude.com/check-files) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This tool identifies only the content credential, which tells you whether Claude was involved in producing the file. It can’t tell whether Claude was involved in creating the content, and it does not include any identifying information about the user. [(2014) The next chapter: Telling the stories of the founders and startups who have Built Oregon](https://siliconflorist.com/2014/09/02/chapter-telling-stories-founders-startups-built-oregon/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I still don’t get how this poorly written blog has put me in interesting conversations with entrepreneurs around the state. Both within the tech scene and without. But it has been weighing on me that Oregon is very much where Portland tech startups were back then. There’s a ton of interesting activity, but the combination of aggressive humility and heads down working means no one is telling those stories. [On the Loose – by Dean W. Ball – Hyperdimensional](https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/on-the-loose) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this case, however, the agents did not copy their weights, attempt to procure replacement compute, or take other steps that would be rational to take if their objective was to survive shutdown. So while the agents in the OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident were rogue, they were not truly sovereign. [US and AI bosses ask G20 not to regulate AI because it could hurt America’s bottom line | TechRadar](https://www.techradar.com/pro/us-and-ai-bosses-ask-g20-not-to-regulate-ai-because-it-could-hurt-americas-bottom-line) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Speaking at a recent G20 meeting, US officials have urged other governments to rely on existing legal frameworks wherever possible rather than treating AI as a totally new policy problem in a bid not to lose competitiveness. [About half of Americans say they spend too much time on their phone. Some are trying to cut back | Pew Research Center](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/09/01/about-half-of-americans-say-they-spend-too-much-time-on-their-smartphone/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Between scrolling, notifications, and messages, smartphones can be hard to put down. Just over half of U.S. adults say they spend too much time on their smartphone, according to a Pew Research Center survey from May and June 2026. About a third of adults say their smartphone use is about right, while just 3% say they spend too little time using these devices. [LLMs: Intelligence vs. cost | OpenTeams | AI you own](https://openteams.com/intelligence-vs-cost/) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One of their main plots is the Intelligence vs. cost plot, which shows the Pareto frontier, i.e. the cheapest model that can achieve each intelligence score. This frontier is important, because using a super-intelligent and super-expensive model to accomplish menial tasks that could be done by a much dumber and cheaper one is just a waste of money. [Bring “In Search of Portland” along on your next walk through Portland](https://nwexaminer.com/p/bring-in-search-of-portland-along?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3306954&post_id=210827087&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=1ieqz&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These days, Libby is still exploring a changing Portland. He brings 25 years of study, close observation and personal anecdotes to his book comprised of six distinct walks. Walks can be taken individually or in one continuous trek. Walking and reading at the same time is up to you. [HuggingFace Attack Postmortem: Civilizations, Reactions and Next Actions | Don’t Worry About the Vase](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2026/09/01/huggingface-attack-postmortem-civilizations-reactions-and-next-actions/?utm_source=tldrai) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ So how do we get the rest of the world to take it appropriately seriously? Where do we go from here? Not only what can we do to not have a worse version of this happen again, but to ensure good outcomes generally, and employ what we learned? [Before You Start Fundraising, You Need to Get Acclimated — Chris Neumann](https://chrisneumann.com/archives/before-you-start-fundraising-you-need-to-get-acclimated) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last week, I met with 4 different startups based outside of California: one from New York, another in London, a third in Vancouver and the fourth from Toronto. All of these startups are preparing to fundraise in the fall (either for their Seed or Series A round). At some point in each of those conversations, I found myself giving the founders a piece of advice that I hadn’t previously offered with any regularity: “You should go to San Francisco a few weeks before you start to fundraise. You need to get acclimated.” [The Harness, the Horse, or the Hay – by Brett Queener](https://queener.substack.com/p/the-harness-the-horse-or-the-hay?utm_source=tldrfounders) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I’ve been pushing this on founders for six months without having a name for it. The analogy finally hit me this week, so here I am, publishing to name an anxiety that has been sitting in the room the whole time. [Investors back Portland startup that could cut the cost of chipmaking – Portland Business Journal](https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2026/09/01/spectralsurf-portland-seed-fund-onami-chip-making.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Spectralsurf has a product that could have huge implications on the semiconductor and display industries. It has developed what is essentially a 3-D printing cartridge filled with liquid metal that can produce the thin film sheets needed in electronics manufacturing at a fraction of the current cost. [DSHR’s Blog: Small Is Beautiful](https://blog.dshr.org/2026/09/small-is-beautiful.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The question is “compared to the closed-weight US models, what do you lose by running open-weight models in-house?” Below the fold I discuss a major study from Stanford that answers the question. [AWS AI Fellowship x NVIDIA](https://startups.aws.com/lp/aws-ai-fellowship-x-nvidia-nemotron-edition) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The nemotron edition is a selective co-investment program for startups to accelerate go-to-market with NVIDIA Nemotron on AWS. Co-build, co-market, and co-sell with AWS and NVIDIA — driving qualified enterprise pipeline and a repeatable co-sell motion. [Artificial intelligence token prices are hitting new record lows](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/ai-token-prices-lows.html) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The LLM Token Expenditure Index, a key gauge of daily prices from intelligence firm Silicon Data, fell to 97 cents on Monday. That marked the index’s lowest reading since its creation late last year and has fallen by more than half from the high recorded earlier this summer. [Exit the Cave – by Justin Andersun – Turtle’s Pace](https://turtlespace.blog/p/exit-the-cave) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Culture has created a cozy Cave. Smart devices reward private fitness. Recommendation algorithms propagate our preexisting philosophy through personalized programming. AI tells us what we want to hear and bolsters our assumptions instead of challenging them. 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