Seven Letters and a Bitcoin: How Iran Is Trying to Monetise the Strait It Didn't Close

The Strait of Hormuz did not close because of mines, missiles, or warships. It closed because of paperwork. On March 5, 2026, seven P&I (Protection and Indemnity) clubs — the mutual insurance associations that underwrite the majority of global maritime liability — issued war-risk cancellation notices for the Persian Gulf. Within days, Lloyd's Market Association designated the entire Gulf as a high-risk zone. Pre-war, roughly 178 vessels transited the strait daily. By mid-March, traffic had collapsed by…

Tech Briefing — Tuesday, May 19 2026

The biggest story today: a jury found in favour of Sam Altman and OpenAI in Elon Musk's lawsuit, while Cerebras hit a $60B market cap on its IPO, claiming it serves trillion-parameter OpenAI models. Meanwhile, Anthropic acquires API tooling company Stainless, and Pope Leo prepares an encyclical on AI and human dignity.

• 🤖 Models and Launches 4
• 💰 Funding and Industry 5
• 🔬 Research and Engineering 5
• 🛠️ Agents and Tools 5
• 📊 Culture and Trends 4
• 🔒 Security 4
• 🌍 World and Notable 4
• 🔥 Hacker News 4

Wafer-Scale Sourdough — Qwen's Thinking Models vs GPT-OSS

Today's inspiration: Cerebras just IPO'd at $60B, claiming to serve trillion-parameter OpenAI models on wafer-scale chips. So naturally, we asked six new models to write a CEO memo pivoting the entire company to artisanal sourdough bread, because "the dough-rising process is basically training a neural network."