Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
Sam Altman says Y Combinator taught him how to govern OpenAI | Fortune
Long before Altman made decisions at the helm of OpenAI, he ran Y Combinator, the influential startup accelerator that has backed thousands of young companies. Unlike running a traditional company, however, Altman couldn’t simply tell the startups YC invested in what to do. “At best you can govern—you don’t get to, like, rule,” Altman told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell in the latest episode of Titans and Disruptors.
(2012) Sequoia Capital: Apple, Oracle, Cisco… and Jive Software
There among names like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, among tech darlings like Cisco, YouTube, AirBnB, and Instagram, sits a company with a very substantial Portland presence: Jive Software.
Senate cloture vote on Clarity Act fails, dealing regulatory blow to crypto industry
The vote was a stunning loss for the crypto industry, which had exuded confidence that enough senators would vote to advance the bill. Leading up to the vote, Democrats expressed frustration that Republican negotiators didn’t meet their demands regarding ethics to address profits gained from crypto ventures by President Donald Trump and his family.
Tracing Illicit OpenAI Agent Activity on Hugging Face | SentinelOne
These findings expose a basic problem for threat intelligence and incident response: no single organization necessarily holds the complete record of an agent’s actions. An account handle is not an actor, and an IP address does not identify who authorized the activity. Investigators must reconstruct the originating task, credential lineage, action sequence, platform history, runtime telemetry, and effects across services. The public trail is part of the incident, not an appendix to it.
Hackers Stole Flock’s Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks Cars and People
Hackers ripped down a Flock camera above a roadway, made a near-complete copy of the data stored inside it, and shared the files with 404 Media and WIRED, revealing in new detail how exactly Flock Safety’s cameras track the movements of both vehicles and people. The hackers say they are also publishing details on how they managed to obtain the software, in the hopes that other people may copy them.
Pulley is shutting down
Pulley is shutting down on December 8th, 2026. At that time, The Pulley app experience will no longer be accessible, and our team will no longer be available to support your organization. You will retain the ability to access your Pulley data in a limited format through the Pulley app until January 31st, 2027.
An Update on Wayback Machine Access | Internet Archive Blogs
The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been hit by waves of high-volume automated traffic, and we’ve put protections in place to keep the service running. One recent change: we rewrote the message you see when a request is blocked with a 429 error — the HTTP code that means “too many requests.” Those protections sometimes catch real people by mistake. If that’s happened to you, we’re sorry, and we appreciate your patience while we work to reduce the errors.
Oregon to celebrate 80th birthday of State Capitol Oregon Pioneer
The Oregon Pioneer arrived at the State Capitol on Sept. 16, 1938. He traveled by way of the Panama Canal, in a crate aboard the cargo ship S.S. Montgomery City, then was transferred to a flatbed truck for the last leg of the journey from the Portland docks to Salem.
Oregon Health Authority issues standing order for updated COVID-19 vaccines : Oregon Health News Blog
Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has issued a standing order that lets vaccine providers across the state begin giving updated COVID-19 vaccines.
I made my website charge AI agents a penny per page. Then I watched Claude pay it. — Suganthan
Google is testing paying publishers when their pages feed its AI answers, on terms only Google can see. My site runs the other version over x402. It returns HTTP 402 to AI agents and unlocks for a cent in USDC, with a public receipt for every crawl, which is the loop those Cloudflare wallet handles will run.
The AI graveyard: a running list of projects and startups that didn’t make it | TechCrunch
The result is a growing AI graveyard. Below is a look at some of the most notable AI products, startups, launches, and bets that have shut down, pivoted, or significantly missed expectations. Think of it less as a scorecard of flops than as a record of what these attempts can (hopefully) teach the rest of the industry.
The Cap Table You Didn’t Notice You Were Building
It isn’t the document. Nobody hates a lawyer-free five-page document. What they hate is showing up for a priced round and finding a cap table littered with SAFEs issued at four different caps on four different terms — and doing the arithmetic and realizing there isn’t room for everybody.
Momentum is Not a Moat – by Dan Hockenmaier
Momentum without a moat is a recipe for racing to build a bad business. Here is how to avoid that fate.
Product Management is Still All About Telling Stories
Product management is about telling the story of people who are going to use the product, and why it will matter in their lives. It has to be immediately understandable, by whoever you’re talking to. And it has to be repeatable – people need to be able to pass it around faithfully, without you being in the room.
Agility’s new humanoid robot will stop, squat to avoid harming human coworkers – Ars Technica
When Agility’s new Digit 5 robot detects a person at a distance, it can autonomously take precautions, like moving to avoid the person or standing still so the person can pass by without getting closer. If a person is getting into close proximity with Digit 5, the robot can even choose to squat and assume a seated position.
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Seats and Sunsets — Steve Yegge
Blogging about agents and orchestrators has become tough, because they are so complex now. I’m thinking of maybe doing a weekly newsletter. But for now, it’s 4am, so I’ll just dump the most important stuff on you from the past few weeks.
A Funeral, a Coworking Space, and What We Mistake for Connection | by Roger Federico Rybak | Sep, 2026 | Medium
“Community” is easy to promise because we tend to look at the first moment: the open door, the full room, the member count. The harder question begins the following day. What makes it possible to come back? Who remembers what happened?
The Valley That Is Building Its Own Safety Net
The Applegate Valley in southern Oregon is 500 square miles of river corridor, mountain ridgeline, and forest, spread across parts of two counties, two states, with no incorporated city, no unified local government, and in many pockets, no reliable cell service. Twenty thousand people live here. When something goes wrong, there is no obvious place to call. This summer, things changed.
New Poll Shows Drazan With Slight Lead in Governor’s Race — Oregon Journalism Project
With less than two months until the Nov. 3 general election, a new poll shows the Republican nominee, state Sen. Christine Drazan (R-Canby), with a slender lead over incumbent Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat.
NBA commissioner Silver warns Trail Blazers relocation would be failure – Portland Business Journal
At a press conference on Tuesday, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he would “see it as a failure” if the Trail Blazers did not remain in Portland and hoped that the team would reach a deal with the city and state to fund Moda Center renovations.
CALSTART Rebrands as Catalyst Mobility – CALSTART
Berube also announced that Forth, a national nonprofit working to advance transportation electrification, will be combining with Catalyst Mobility at the start of 2027. By bridging shared missions, programs, and partners, the nonprofit will have greater access to diverse funding, grants, and public contracts; a larger pool of networking contacts; and a stronger footprint in the Pacific Northwest with the launch of a regional office in Portland, Oregon, home of Forth’s headquarters.
Finding the Billion-dollar Opportunities Others Miss
Most companies are still stuck on the top three layers. Almost nobody goes below the top six. I’ve listed all nine below, with examples where applicable, from Planoly, a company I co-acquired last year. Why are the opportunities huge? Most people are afraid of “scary” emotions at the deeper levels.