Silicon Florist links arrangement for October 12, 2026

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Anthropic can’t reliably control its AI agents — it’s cutting off its internal evals from the live internet instead | TechCrunch

The incidents, disclosed in a blog post, involved AI agents tasked to solve problems seeking resources on the internet. In the process, they exploited software flaws, accessed databases without paying fees, used URL-shortening services to smuggle information past restrictions, and even submitted a false murder tip to the Philadelphia police.

What a Coastal Economy Looks Like Up Close – by Brad Attig

Legislators who represent Oregon’s coast will meet in Seaside on Oct. 28 and 29 for the 2026 Oregon Coast Economic Summit, along with business leaders, economic development professionals, community leaders, and industry representatives from across the state. The summit’s attendee list also names business owners, entrepreneurs, tourism and hospitality professionals, and chambers of commerce.

Highlights From the 2026 IA40 Summit: Harnessing the Value of AI

This past week Madrona hosted its fifth annual IA40 Summit, where we celebrated the winners of the IA40 (the top 40 private AI startups as voted on by our VC peers) and heard from AI leaders and builders like Rahul Patil (CTO Anthropic) Charles Lamanna (EVP at Microsoft), Swami Sivasubramanian (VP of Agentic AI at AWS), Zico Kolter (OpenAI board member and co-founder of Gray Swan), Thomas Dohmke (former CEO of GitHub, now founder of Entire), Jeanne Grosser (COO of Vercel), Carina Hong (CEO of Axiom Math), and many others. It was also our biggest summit yet with over 400+ attendees 🙂

Beers with Engineers, Thu, Oct 15, 2026, 5:00 PM | Meetup

Beers with Engineers is a diverse group of engineers from a variety of fields coming together to share a drink after work, commiserate with like-minded nerds, and learn more about our respective industries.

(2021) A name synonymous with kids books pens a kids book for Portland’s A Kids Company About

For many kids, Reading Rainbow was one of the formative television programs that put them on the path to exploring books. And the host of that show, LeVar Burton, was a big part of making them seem accessible. Now, LeVar has written his own kids book A Kids Book About Imagination for Portland startup A Kids Company About.

AI is less regulated than milk, Microsoft president says

Brad Smith said there needed to be global safety rules in place, including a legal obligation to tell a “victim” if their system is breached by a rogue AI agent as well as deciding when outside evaluators should sign off on an AI product before it is released.

Passkeys are a trap. Do not use them. – by The Hack

What’s important to know is that unlike with any other kind of login credential, you do not have ultimate control over your passkeys. With passwords, you can choose where to write them down; with authenticator apps, you can decide for yourself which ones to use (they’re pretty interchangeable); and with physical security keys you can hand them to your colleague if you really trust them. But with passkeys come a hidden dial that lets the websites you use them on gradually remove your ability to do as you please with them.

Latino Founders leases Founders Hub in Modern Media Building – Portland Business Journal

The group, which works with entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, has leased 15,000 square feet in the Modern Media Building, 207 N.W. Park Ave. It’s a much larger space than its previous 3,000 square feet in Southeast Portland.

Gen Z sees ‘more opportunity’ outside Oregon, poll shows – oregonlive.com

More than half, or 54%, of 18-29 year olds like Schmidt who responded to a new poll commissioned by The Oregonian/OregonLive said they were considering moving in the next five years. Within that age group, 18% said they’d most likely move within Oregon, 5% said they’d leave the country, 7% said they didn’t know where they’d go — while 70% said they would most likely leave Oregon.

Investigating unintended model actions in our evaluations and internal use

This report describes examples of unintended model actions we’ve observed during evaluations and internal use of Claude. It is part of our effort to publish more frequent standalone reports on model behavior and alignment beyond our system cards, which we publish with each model release, and our risk reports, which we publish every three to six months as part of our Responsible Scaling Policy. We believe it’s important to be transparent about what we see our models do during testing and use.

AI Scaling vs Human Scaling — Toby Ord

People often think of giving AIs more tokens to complete a task as akin to giving a human worker more time — especially when those tokens are used to extend the AI’s sequential chain of thought or tool use. It’s a useful analogy, but it isn’t clear whether the AI systems are as efficient as the humans are at turning these extra resources into superior performance.

Weekly Review: A Second Kind of User – by Sam Keen

Welcome to Altered Craft’s weekly AI review for developers, and thank you for making time for it. This edition has a clear thread: tools are being designed with the agent as a user. DuckDB’s CLI now detects a coding agent and changes its output to suit one, a sandbox explains its refusals in text the model can read, and Docker ships agents like container images. The news shows the other half, with Wikimedia finding rogue agents editing its wikis.

How to Build Wealth as a Career Person – Asher’s Blog

There is a popular idea that substantial wealth belongs mainly to entrepreneurs. We celebrate founders, investors and business owners so loudly that a career person can begin to believe that employment is merely a way to pay bills, while ownership is the only credible path to prosperity. I do not believe that is true.

Code & Coffee @ Roseline Coffee, Sat, Oct 17, 2026, 10:00 AM | Meetup

Roseline Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session. Drink some coffee, bring your laptop, and have engaging conversations. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, share your knowledge, and possibly collaborate on side projects, online courses, or even your day-to-day work tasks.

Something Has Gone Terribly Wrong at Anthropic | by Alberto Romero | Oct, 2026 | Medium

Wasn’t Anthropic growing super fast just a few months ago? Is this the result of OpenAI’s relentless competition? Did enterprises paying for Claude get tired of its writing style? Was the “run rate” revenue temporary? Is Anthropic in an existential crisis ahead of IPO? Is this just the initial S of a “multi-S” exponential growth?

PDX Code & Coffee @ Kiln, Fri, Oct 16, 2026, 9:00 AM | Meetup

Code and Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session. Drink some coffee, bring your laptop, and have engaging conversations. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, share your knowledge, and possibly collaborate on side projects, online courses, or even your day-to-day work tasks.

From the desk of Sophie Peel: How we make our endorsements

This year, we’ve met with more than 80 candidates across 34 contests. A lot of people have questions about our endorsement process, so here’s the gist of it…

This Week at Silicon Slopes: News From Utah’s Community, Businesses, and Events

Silicon Slopes is proud to partner with 47G for its first-ever Hard Tech Week, October 26 – 30, which supports the founders, engineers, and companies building the future of aerospace, defense, space, and advanced manufacturing in Utah.

Data centers muscle into small towns: 4 things to know – oregonlive.com

While data centers have brought jobs and investment to rural and suburban communities, they’ve often done so on their own terms, regardless of what local residents want. Tech companies extract enormous tax breaks, using lawsuits and legal threats to bypass local restrictions and hide their plans.

Charcuterie Me adds lunch offering

We’ve been working on something new…and lunch is officially here! Charcuterie Me now offers fresh, made-to-order lunches for meetings, team lunches, client gatherings, tours, events, and everything in between.

Automattic interim CFO resigns just weeks after boardroom shakeup | TechCrunch

Automattic’s interim chief financial officer Jeremy Klaperman has left his position after less than a month, TechCrunch has learned. Klaperman had been elevated to the new job last month after the governance crisis at the WordPress.com parent company, which saw its entire board either quit or be fired.