Silicon Florist links arrangement for October 28, 2026

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

Neural Networks Are Already Clean

After many months studying neurons and circuits in image and language models, I’ve come to believe a network’s own mechanisms are its legible building blocks, and that the outlook for mechanistic interpretability may be far better than I’d feared. The canonical evidence of polysemanticity and superposition that convinced much of the field, including me, that networks pack concepts arbitrarily was misread. What looked like arbitrary packing was mostly a motif I’ll call recursive generalization, which is much less concerning. This means we can study networks directly, instead of first untangling them. Neural networks are already clean.

PDX Code & Coffee – Beaverton @ Fly Chai, Mon, Nov 2, 2026, 9:00 AM | Meetup

Code & Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session: drink your beverage of choice, bring your laptop, and hang out with your peers! Have engaging conversations, or focus on work or projects. 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.

AI optimism meets data center backlash as protesters disrupt Seattle AI Week kickoff – GeekWire

Speaking with GeekWire outside the event on Monday afternoon, one of the protesters who had interrupted the panel singled out that remark. She said it dismissed public concerns about AI as the product of bad headlines, and she objected to the idea of using community groups to win people over to the benefits of artificial intelligence.

The Counting House — Steve Yegge. I think a pattern is starting to emerge… | by Steve Yegge | Oct, 2026 | Medium

I think a pattern is starting to emerge in enterprise AI-modernization, and I’ve been collecting the design ideas into an assembly I call the Counting House. This pattern adds AI to systems handling large volumes of human work, notably customer service departments, though the same pattern fits claims processing and other casework, with millions to tens of millions of contacts per year. This writeup is a postcard introduction to the Counting House, compared side by side with SDLC-side development, which it does not much resemble.

Portland State celebrates $2M grant for advanced microscope – Portland Business Journal

PSU is seeing CHIPS impact in part through its role in Frontiers of Advanced Semiconductor Technology, or FAST. A public-private consortium administered at Oregon State University, it won a CHIPS-backed National Science Foundation Regional Innovation Engine Award that’s expected to deliver $160 million over the next 10 years.

(2014) Okay, it just got weird: Jason Bateman to direct, star as Portland’s Mike Merrill, the publicly traded man

We like our weird in Portland. It’s true. We’re so weird, in fact, that we stole our “Keep Portland Weird” slogan from Austin, Texas. That’s how weird we are. So when a guy decides to sell shares in himself and allow shareholders to decide his fate, we’re like “Yeah. That happened.” But when Jason Bateman enters the picture, we have to take pause.

Hunger beats tenure: Advice for junior engineers

I’m seeing engineers who are comparatively new fly past people who are probably better coders and have been around much longer. Hunger beats tenure.

An update from Amazon engineering leadership on the role of the developer in the age of AI

Amazon engineering leaders revised the role guideline for software development engineers, underscoring what matters most is the outcome, not which tools are used.

Apple’s git still trusts the compromised eMudhra certificates

Apple was notified of the eMudhra incident on 17th October. As of 28th October, the developer tools Apple ships with macOS, including git, curl and python3, still trust the compromised certificates.

ICE Is Running One of the Largest Anti-Left Surveillance Operations in US History | WIRED

Nothing of this scale has been seen in the United States, experts say, since the federal government’s counterinsurgency against the New Left and the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

Portland biotech Caravel Bio awarded SBIR Phase II – Portland Business Journal

Caravel Bio is building a data engine to provide the information needed to build and test proteins with novel chemistries used in such areas as health care and pollution reduction. Nicks said the company’s process competes by doing the work faster and cheaper.

A Startup Just Pulled Electricity From an Underwater Volcano Off Oregon. The Next Step Is Much Harder Startup Generates Geothermal Power From Underwater Volcano

Seattle-based startup Endurance Energy recently tested the world’s first subsea geothermal power plant at Axial Seamount, an active underwater volcano about 300 miles (500 kilometers) off the coast of Oregon. The results, announced last week, show that its technology is technically feasible.

Formalizing the Enormous Theorem

Today, we are releasing the first complete computer-checked proof of the Classification of Finite Simple Groups (CFSG). One of the major achievements of twentieth-century mathematics, the classification identifies the basic building blocks of finite groups. Widely considered to be the longest mathematical proof ever written by humans, the original proof of CFSG extends across roughly 15,000 pages in more than 500 articles by about 100 mathematicians, earning CFSG the nickname “the enormous theorem.”

Log in to your Techstars account

Thank you for your interest in applying to Techstars. You can begin an application year-round, and can continue to update it at any time. Completing this application should take you 30–60 minutes. We encourage you to complete this with any co-founders.

I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This — Chris Neumann

This fall fundraising season hasn’t just been busy, it’s been unprecedented in terms of both the quality and quality of companies trying to raise capital. But more than that, it feels like over the summer founders adjusted and came to terms with what VCs are looking for right now: unapologetic ambition.

Requests for Startups | Y Combinator

AI’s biggest bottlenecks are moving beyond the models. We’re excited about a new wave of startups building the hardware, infrastructure, financial systems, and specialized software needed to bring intelligence into the real economy, from factories and data centers to government and space.

The Early Access Playbook v2.0

Early access starts with a few people who already have the problem you want to solve. You can find them before writing code. Ask about the last time they tried to do the job, what they used and where the work got difficult. When there’s a product to try, invite them to use it for something real.

How to Raise Venture Capital: How to Pitch Really Damn Well

The best founders are worldbuilders. They are able to envision a future world that doesn’t exist yet and share the intense excitement of that vision with investors. The path from here to that reality may be excruciatingly difficult, but worldbuilders convince investors that their team, technology, and execution will close the gap.

The Feature That Made You Ordinary – by Todd Gagne

Mobile order and pay launched in 2015. It solved a real problem: the line. You tapped your phone, walked in, grabbed your cup, and left. Customers loved it. Today roughly a third of transactions at U.S. company stores come through the app, and more than 70% of sales come from the app and the drive-thru combined.