Silicon Florist links arrangement for October 26, 2026

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

Vamos Local | Discover Latino-Owned Food Businesses

Vamos Local is powered by local businesses and the community behind them. If you’d like your business to be considered for future Vamos Local campaigns, events, and directory opportunities, start by joining the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber.

Analyst Notes: Answering your questions about data centers and water | USAFacts

To understand how “thirsty” a given data center is, we would need to know how it cools the equipment inside. And federal data doesn’t provide answers at the data center level or in the aggregate.

Portland author, technologist is building Human Intelligence to fight AI slop – Portland Business Journal

The Portland-based startup has created a system to verify human-created work, and it is targeting the publishing industry as its first beachhead, said co-founder and CEO Ned Hayes.

The Agent Can’t Take It With It – by Stoic Product Manager

So what would an agent do for each of us? For me it’s simple. Search for this, find it, get it for me. Boom, confirm. For my friend it’s a much more complicated workflow that an agent would have to understand. It could watch for specific items and send alerts when something shows up. Maybe help haggle a better price. But talking to the sellers? I wouldn’t touch that, because for them that’s part of the fun. That’s not the mundane part, that’s the reason they use the app.

(2010) Portland’s Multnomah County takes a page from the startup playbook, opting for Google Apps over Microsoft Office

When you’re trying to build a startup—or run a fledgling project—every little bit helps. And lately, one of the most popular startup cost cutting maneuvers has been eschewing expensive office software suites in favor of free online versions—like Google Docs or Google Apps—of course.

Anthropic, PBC – S-1 (Q2)

Anthropic’s Initial Public Offering filing

The End of the Internet – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

My life is defined by the Internet: I witnessed and participated in its evolution, and maybe in some small way contributed to it; I certainly owe my livelihood and success to it. I bemoan its passing.

California Startups Have Raised More So Far In 2026 Than The Entire US Ever Has In A Single Year

California companies have scooped up more than three-fourths of all U.S. startup funding this year. That, per Crunchbase data, is an apparent record share.

Can Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s Former CEO, Help Fix A.I.’s Gender Problem?  – The New York Times

Marissa Mayer made her name as a pioneer at Google, then as chief executive at Yahoo. Now Mayer is entering the crowded marketplace for A.I. assistants — and hoping to draw in more women.

Brown student maps the hidden global labor powering AI | Brown University

Cunyan Ma’s interactive tool exposes the power structure that extracts low-wage labor from data workers in the Global South to make everyday AI algorithms function.

5 Books to Read at Portland’s New Indigenous-Owned Bookstore

Last month, Casandra Hanson opened Portland’s first Indigenous-owned bookstore, Sahaptin Stories, on Southeast Division Street. A member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs in north-central Oregon, Hanson lives in Colton, Ore.—about halfway between Portland and Warm Springs—but she set up her bookstore in the city to reach as many people as possible. Its shelves are devoted to books by and about Indigenous peoples and perspectives.

BikePortland’s next chapter – BikePortland

After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to step aside. Stepping aside does not mean stepping away. Like I said a few days ago, the BikePortland website (and social channels) will remain and continue to be a platform. However, I want to be clear that I will not return to my previous role as an active journalist and community concierge.

Kelly’s Olympian building gets new co-working space – Portland Business Journal

A Tacoma-based architect is bringing his coworking and programming model to downtown Portland. Reid Fetters, a serial entrepreneur who got his start in architecture, is opening his third coworking location called UrbanWork on the second floor of the Bullier Building next week.

Knowing How Is Not Knowing What | Yunze Xiao

Think about a new hire on a finance team. Nobody shows them how to use the spreadsheet; they already know. The six months it takes them to become useful go into other things: learning which numbers the CFO actually reads, which vendor is always late, why nobody touches the Q3 forecast tab, and what “close the books” means at this particular company. None of that is in the product.

AI wasn’t overhyped. Almost everyone underestimated it.

I estimated AI would reach 32% in FrontierMath by the end of 2026, and 97% in 2030. I was more bullish than most, but AI was far ahead: 40% at the end of 2025 and 94% by September 2026, more than three years early.

Weekly Review: Just Enough Model – by Sam Keen

Welcome back to Altered Craft’s weekly AI review for developers. Thank you for reading, and for the replies and shares that keep this going. The thread this week is how much model a job really needs. Meta’s orchestrator does no reasoning, Cloudflare extracts without an LLM, Mistral forecasts on a CPU, and a 298-question test asks whether an agent loop earns its place. Anthropic’s own numbers suggest the judgment about where to spend intelligence is becoming the developer’s main job.

Your marketing team will be on GitHub within a year

Today her team keeps all of its AI knowledge and automations in one shared place, and everyone’s AI tool reads from it. When someone builds a new skill, the whole team has it straight away. And when a better model comes along, they can switch without losing anything.

Introducing Stripe Treasury for agents

Stripe Treasury for agents means business finances can now be executed by agents from inside the tools they use to run the rest of their operations. They can check balances, pay invoices, transfer funds between accounts, and convert currencies. Businesses will soon be able to use agents for more tasks, including creating cards. They’ll also be able to set spending limits for their agents in the coming weeks.

When Traction Becomes Personal Exposure: What The Joonko Guilty Plea Means For Founders

Founders raising capital must sell investors on what their companies could become. But Raz’s case illustrates the personal stakes of misrepresenting a business’ achievements, and investors are increasingly willing to take those claims to court.

AI for Portland Business Owners · Luma

A monthly meetup for Portland business owners who want AI to take real work off their plate. Practical, plain English, no sales pitch.