Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
Waxy Refresh: Supercut.org – Waxy.org
Today’s refresh is Supercut.org, a site I first launched in 2011 as part of Seven on Seven with Michael Bell-Smith, and redesigned later that year as a browsable archive of every supercut I could find.
Hillsboro co. Lotus Applied Technology is acquired – Portland Business Journal
Both companies do work in atomic layer deposition, or ALD, a technology for coating objects with an ultra-thin film layer of materials. It’s considered fundamental in making leading-edge chips and is also used in manufacturing of batteries, solar cells and other products.
(2011) Being more critical of the Northwest tech scene: All Things Critical takes off the rose colored glasses
For some, the picture being painted of the Rose City startup and tech scene is a just a little too Utopian. They purport that maybe, just maybe, the Northwest startup scene isn’t so much a world of rainbows and unicorns. And they would like to see some more objective assessment and criticism of what’s happening.
You Can’t Refactor a Budget – Todd Greco
This is the reason AI-accelerated delivery keeps underwhelming at enterprise scale. Teams do get faster at building. Nothing gets faster at deciding what to build, or at releasing the money to build it. The work piles up behind a gate that opens four times a year.
White House Whipsaws Silicon Valley (and Itself) Over A.I. Rules – The New York Times
The whiplash is a sign of the Trump administration’s conflicting impulses when it comes to A.I. and the difficulties of handling such a quickly developing and powerful technology. The White House has aggressively intervened in swaths of the economy over the last 18 months, from media to computer chip manufacturing to mining. But A.I. is changing rapidly and the government has scrambled to determine how to put its thumb on the scale.
Amazon surpasses $3trn market valuation for the first time
Tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Nvidia are the other four companies to have previously recorded a market value of $3trn.
Everything I Know – Buckminster Fuller Institute
These thinking out loud lectures span 42 hours and examine in depth all of Fuller’s major inventions and discoveries from the 1927 Dymaxion house, car and bathroom, through the Wichita House, geodesic domes, and tensegrity structures, as well as the contents of Synergetics. Autobiographical in parts, Fuller recounts his own personal history in the context of the history of science and industrialization.
Oregon drought grows, reaching most widespread level in 4 years – OPB
Nearly all of Oregon is experiencing drier than normal conditions, and 57.6% of the state is experiencing severe or extreme drought.
Design Arena creators raise $7.9 million to bring taste to AI models | TechCrunch
There was no substitute for human judgment, they decided, and soon they were brainstorming ways to get honest human feedback at scale. The result became Design Arena, an AI tool now used by 5.3 million people around the world. As it turned out, there were lots of AI companies looking for scalable user feedback — and many of them were willing to pay for it.
A Record 14 Billion-Dollar Rounds In July Pushed Venture’s Historic Run Higher
Global venture funding showed no signs of slowing in July. Startup capital totaled $65 billion, up 100% year over year, as the month notched the highest-ever number of billion-dollar venture rounds on record, per Crunchbase data.
YC Startup Internship Expo | Y Combinator
YC is turning its Dogpatch HQ into a AI/startup internship expo for the most ambitious students in the Bay. On Saturday August 15th, we’re inviting students to spend the day meeting founders and engineers from over 50 of YC’s top startups. Learn how the best AI companies actually operate, and explore what it’s like to work on AI agents, robotics, biotech, defense tech, developer tools, infrastructure, and entirely new kinds of products enabled by AI.
LLMs reward expertise
The most important skill in prompting is expertise in the domain you’re prompting for.
The Shape of Things to Come, Part 1: The Continuous Thunderdome — Steve Yegge
I did predict much of this post, fifteen months ago, with Revenge of the Junior Developer. It’s all going exactly on schedule. I am running fleets of agents, budgets are soaring, all of it.
Meet the Artists Behind the Walk – by Brad Attig
The Corvallis Art Walk generates foot traffic and economic activity through downtown every third Thursday of the month. The artists and craftspeople on the art walk welcome people to their stops, but often don’t have a chance to see the art walk stops for themselves. The Corvallis Art Walk Meetup on August 7th is an attempt to change that.
AI Builder Series: SOUND, VISION, MACHINE
A 90-minute walkthrough of real-time AI workflows for live art & music performance.
Waxy Refresh: The End of Playfic – Waxy.org
Today’s refresh is a bit different: after 14 years, I decided to finally retire Playfic, the community for writing and sharing interactive fiction games that I launched in 2012 with my then-teenaged nephew, Cooper.
Welcome – Kreneon – July 2026
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Kreneon newsletter! We are thrilled to launch this periodic update to share our progress as we build the institutional infrastructure layer for the global water sector.
Head of Developer Growth Marketing Job at Depot Technologies, Inc. in Portland, Oregon | Silicon Florist
We’re looking for a Head of Developer Growth Marketing to own Depot’s developer acquisition engine and lead the marketing function through a period of rapid growth. You’ll run the demand program that drives trials and new customers, and work with a small, high-leverage team that performs like one several times its size. We’re scaling deliberately, not by brute-force headcount, because we expect everyone here to operate with serious leverage.
How strategic investment helped one Oregon startup become a critical link in America’s semiconductor supply – Portland Business Journal
Like many Oregon startups, Valliscor reached a point where innovation alone wasn’t enough. To keep growing, the company needed land, infrastructure and capital. That’s where Business Oregon entered the story.
More Oregon startup news
