SkepticalScience.com causes 100% CPU usage leading to near system freeze

Description of the issue:

Visiting a specific website causes Brave to quickly start using 100% CPU, leading to an unresponsive browser UI, and eventually a nearly unresponsive system UI.

Steps to Reproduce (add as many as necessary): 1. 2. 3.

  1. Install Brave Beta on macOS Mojave.
    a. Open an incognito window to make sure there are no extensions interfering/causing this.
  2. Visit https://skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm
  3. Enjoy using Force Quit

Actual Result (gifs and screenshots are welcome!):
Pretty clear. Fans start blowing like crazy, nothing is usable.
Expected result:
Load the page without freezing the machine, like Chrome does (works fine!), Safari, and Firefox.

Reproduces how often:
Every time.

Brave Version(See the About Brave page in the main menu):
Version 0.67.112 Chromium: 76.0.3809.62 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)

Reproducible on current live release (yes/no):
On current beta, yes

Additional Information:
None. Pretty simple. I did not test on stable.

Couple things to try –

  1. Disable hardware acceleration from settings > additional settings > system
  2. Disable Brave Shields and try again. Is the behavior still present?

Good tips. I narrowed it down to the Fingerprinting Protection shield.
Edit: Yep, even with block only 3rd party does the issue persist. Only allowing all fingerprinting resolves it. The other variables have no influence.

Is this really considered a solution? I didn’t post this so I can visit the site, but instead to have a useful bug report for developers. Is there a more suitable bug tracking system I can post this to?

Hi, @claudios. I agree that allowing all fingerprinting isn’t really a solution, but a workaround, given Brave’s mission. @Asad, could you create a report… I’m not even sure what the system is called or the right terminology is at the end of this long day, but I know there’s a … ticket system (?) for this kind of thing.

@hnktong, @claudios,
Yes, this should be filed – there’s likely a canvas element on page somewhere getting blocked and subsequently causing the browser to “churn” repeatedly as it continues to attempt to draw or place that element.

For reporting bugs, almost all of them are filed on our Github. If you have an account (or if you want to make one – sign up is quick and easy!) anyone can file issues for Devs to consider as long as they follow the template (sound familiar? :slight_smile: ).

You’re more than welcome to do so if you’d like the practice filing an “official” report. To do so:

  1. Login (or create) to your Github account
  2. Visit our Github Repo --> [Issues tab]
  3. Click New Issue
  4. You’ll be presented with a rather familiar looking template inside the editor:
  5. Fill out the required fields and hit submit – you can also preview the post in the preview tab at the top of the editor.

Let me know if any of that is unclear – if nether of you want to file the issue I’m more than happy to do so myself :slight_smile:

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Thank you very much, @Mattches. I’ll sign up later or tomorrow and learn the system. For now, I’m burnt and need to go home.

Peace out,
Hnk

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Thank you @Mattches. I created a GitHub issue. @hnktong

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Cool.

Also, as a cynical jerk, I appreciate the irony of a climate change advocacy site spiking power usage and hence increasing greenhouse gas and heat generation. :stuck_out_tongue:

A follow up to that same issue. When I change the global setting to eliminate the fingerprinting, I can then access the site. I check the site specific settings and fingerprinting is blocked for the site. When I go back and reset global settings, it changes the setting for the page and it goes back to freezing.

Am I doing something wrong?