A small group of teams has an outsized impact on the collective imagination of racing fans.

Certain images spring to mind when we think of drivers, circuits, even decades. The supremacy of the Williams car in the 90s, with Rothmans livery and Renault engine, falls into this category.

The immediacy of memories inevitably fades. If the stock is not replenished, exhilaration gives way to sepia-tinged nostalgia.

Williams is one of a group of five teams that won every Constructors’ Championship between 1979 and 2008 and every Drivers’ Championship from 1984 to 2008. …

I chatted with Chip Huyen, lecturer in machine learning at Stanford University, to get the inside track on Github Copilot. Chip produces a lot of fantastic content and is very much worth following on LinkedIn here, and/or Twitter here. Her Machine Learning Interviews Book is superb, too.

Welcome to a very special edition of hi, tech.

I’ll warn you now: It’s heavy on the stats. The word “if” also does a lot of heavy lifting.

Oh sure, I’ve peppered in the odd jokette here, a tired stereotype there, but it’s mainly a hard-hitting soccer-based analysis.

More traditional fare is on the way this Sunday, when I’ll be reviewing Github Copilot.

Now if you recall our Euro 2020 tournament preview edition, we suggested Italy as potential winners and I do hope you placed that tidy bet. We made no other predictions in that edition. Nope, none at all…

They say if you can’t find something you’re looking for, make it yourself.

I haven’t found a reliable, simple summary of the big tech monopolies. Hence, the hi, tech. Monopoly Watch is here.

I’ll collate stats on the major monopolies out there, then share them periodically. I reckon once a quarter will be enough: that’s the thing with monopolies — they rarely budge.

Let’s check in on five major sectors of the online world, with data from June 2021:

(These figures are all nominally “global”, but of course we need to factor in the lack of available data in some…

Euro 2020 kicks off on Friday evening and, in spite of Northern Ireland’s notable absence, it should be a hoot.

I’ve taken a look below at the wild, the wacky, and the just plain whimsical of Euro 2020 data.

😷 The pandemic effect

First, it’s being played in 2021 and it’s called Euro 2020. I’m sure that didn’t pass you by. The pandemic had quite the impact on that front.

But there are also some changes to the rules:

• Squads can contain 26 players, rather than the usual 23.
• Teams are permitted five substitutions per game, rather than the usual three.
• Stadium capacities are significantly reduced, typically to about 20–25% of the maximum. Budapest is a notable exception — Hungary will have sold-out crowds…

I can be pretty cynical.

Hey, you would be too if you’d seen what I’ve seen. Mainly Frasier repeats and pictures of dogs wearing jackets. That’ll scar a man.

And the well of cynicism is unlikely to run dry while things like this exist:

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have been all over the news recently.

A collage of digital art by ‘Beeple’ (Mike Winkelmann) sold for $69 million at Christie’s; the Kings of Leon released an album as an NFT; and people have even started buying virtual houses as NFTs.

When the winning bidder for the Beeple painting, “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”, received their prize they didn’t get hold of a physical item. Instead, they got a .jpg file containing the image and a record of their ownership on a blockchain.

NFT art is a buzzy trend at a time when retail investors are looking for alternative ways to invest their cash. …

Originally published in the hi, tech. newsletter.

Very few of us had a good 2020, but Netflix bucked that trend. It added over 40 million new subscribers, taking the global total to more than 200 million. 74 million people in the US have a Netflix subscription today.

New challenges emerged, too. The competitive landscape is crowded and Netflix needs new ways to keep us all watching.

Plus, it can be difficult just to find something good to watch on there.

I’ve taken a step back and looked at the numbers I could find, to answer the following:

• Which country has…