TikTok became the world’s most popular web site during 2021, according to Cloudflare’s Radar service.

Cloudflare’s explanation for how Radar calculates site popularity says its assessment is “derived from aggregated data from the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver” and “a range of data that Cloudflare has about global Internet traffic patterns.”

But just how Cloudflare decides its rankings unknown, while the fact that Radar launched in September 2020 means its assessments for that year were based on less data.

With that in mind, here’s the firm’s top 10 sites for 2021 and 2020.

Cloudflare’s a network grooming company, so offers no opinion on why TikTok overtook its rivals. But its analysis suggests TikTok first topped global traffic on February 17, 2021, , then by March scored a few more days in the top slot. After August 10, 2021, TikTok took the lead on most days.

Google occasionally scores a day on top of the charts, but TikTok is the leader on most days.

YouTube topped the charts for a single day – February 2nd – a day that saw some Superbowl commercials debut, but which was also the day after a coup in Myanmar that was inadvertently recorded in an exercise video broadcast on local TV and then widely shared on YouTube.

Cloudflare rates Facebook “a solid number three” – except during its October outage when it slumped to fourth place.

That’s usually Microsoft.com’s slot, thanks in part to Cloudflare counting traffic to Teams and Office365. Apple’s ranking is helped by traffic to Apple TV+.

Cloudflare’s also noticed robust performance by Chinese companies: Alibaba’s Taobao.com remained the world’s second-most-trafficked e-commerce site, while JD.com topped Shopify.com and even made it into the global top 100 sites for a few days.

Chinese fast fashion outlet shein.com beat out Bestbuy.com and Target.com in the week before Christmas 2020. It’s since peaked at number 301 on the global traffic charts.

Cloudflare’s revealed plenty more events and oddities in its summary of Radar results, here. ®

Opinion It's the end of the year, when the tradition is to look back at what just happened. Let's not do that. Let's take a step back and look at the wider picture, because while we've been worrying about data breaches and OS updates, we've rather missed the point.

The world is living through an historically great technological revolution as huge as any that has gone before. Farming and settlement turned us from slaves to masters of life support systems. The printing press liberated thought and enabled the Enlightenment and science. The Industrial Revolution linked energy to society.

Now, the information revolution is doing the same for data, putting it to work, putting it in the hands of everyone, upsetting the status quo so fast we can barely see the shapes it makes.

Who, Me? Before one can organise a piss-up in a brewery, one must first get the brewery started. Something a Register reader found difficult in today's Who, Me?

Our tale takes us back to the '80s, the decade of fun. Our brave reader – let's call him "Gareth" – was heading up a team building a state-of-the-art Brewery Process Block.

It was quite the thing to behold. "They literally came from all over Europe to see it," boasted Gareth. The clever modular design meant that bits could start being water tested even if other parts were not quite ready. It was also up and running – handy since a grand opening was planned.

12BoC Every little bit doesn't help in today's edition of our final run of 2021 Borks: The 12 Borks of Christmas.

It is the Hove branch of the UK grocery retailer Tesco feeling the pinch today as a number of Register readers and your correspondent separately spotted the same bit of sick signage outside the store.

Review Smartphones aren't very exciting anymore, but Apple insists its mutually optimised operating system, online services, and proprietary silicon combine to deliver an uncommonly fine experience.

I decided to put that assertion to the test with both an unusual and extreme workload, and with general smartphone tasks.

For the extreme workload I chose to use the iPhone to run Zwift, a cycling simulation game that ingests real-time information about a cyclist's power and cadence, broadcast over Bluetooth, and matches those exertions to simulated speeds in a virtual world.

12BoC We take a trip to the seaside in our 12 Borks of Christmas as a parking machine touchscreen goes rogue... with inevitable consequences.

The fair city of Brighton has many car parks, all of which will charge the visiting motorist an eye-watering premium in return for a few hours of parking.

It appears that one customer has taken advantage of a distressed unit, the touchscreen of which is displaying Microsoft Paint (replete with a bitmap of the local council's logo) rather than the normal extortionate rates expected for a stay in Brighton and Hove.

12BoC Welcome to The Register's Twelve Borks of Christmas (12BoC), a final festive hurrah for digital signage silage and, behind today's window, a reminder that wherever Windows might turn up, Notepad has always got your back.

Snapped by a keen-eyed Register reader, this ATM outside a branch of UK grocery shop Sainsbury's does not look set to be dispensing cash any time soon. One of a pair, the screen belies the presence of Microsoft's finest within thanks to our old friend, Windows Notepad.

Something for the Weekend, Sir? Twas the night after Christmas, but I felt all alone.

I'd opted for on-call rather than spend it at home.

Paid double to sit idle, my colleagues did say:

Episode 23 It wouldn't be Christmas without the smell of chestnuts on an open fire and the sound of carols in the air …

On Call Welcome to On Call, and a telephone mystery solved only after an innocent party found themselves on the receiving end of a most unexpected conversation.

Our story, from a reader Regomised as "Des", takes place in the closing years of the 20th century and concerns an IVR platform he'd developed.

IVR, or Interactive Voice Response, was the slightly inaccurate name given to the then exciting new technology whereby one might jab digits on one's phone to interact with a system on the other end of the line. Perhaps to leave a voicemail, make an order, or interact with any number of premium services.

The European Processor Initiative (EPI) has concluded the first phase of its efforts to create made-in-Europe chips, an effort it is hoped will reduce reliance on imports, improve sovereign capabilities, and create the continent's first exascale supercomputer.

The EPI’s end-of-year report, published this week, notes a few major achievements, among them delivering the specification of “Rhea”, the first generation of the EPI General-Purpose Processor (GPP) implementation and its future derivates.

Rhea is built on Arm’s Neoverse V1 processor architecture, but it also has 29 RISC-V cores deployed as controllers. Rhea is planned to be deployed in an exascale super in 2023.

Microsoft has revealed a vulnerability in its Azure App Service for Linux allowed the download of files that users almost certainly did not intend to be made public.

Microsoft bills the Azure App Service as just the thing if you want to “Quickly and easily create enterprise-ready web and mobile apps for any platform or device, and deploy them on a scalable and reliable cloud infrastructure.”

Note that description does not mention security.

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