Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

The offending tweet content:

      ه҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈ͫͬͩͮͨͪͯͥͥͫͪͧͣͯͪͨͣͥͬͪ ҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈ͪͥͨͪͫͬͭͮͯͥͤͣͥͨͪͧͣͯͬͪ ҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈҈ͪͨͪͫͬͩͮͯͥͨͣͥͫͪͧͣͯͥͬͪ

Edit: I've narrowed it down to the following byte sequence. I can't seem to remove any of the characters without it no longer crashing:

    00000000  d9 88 d2 88 cd a5 cd a8  cd aa cd af 20 d2 88 d2  |............ ...|
    00000010  88 d2 88                                          |...|
    00000013
Hixie's unicode decoder says this is:

    U+0648 ARABIC LETTER WAW character (و)
    U+0488 COMBINING CYRILLIC HUNDRED THOUSANDS SIGN character (҈)
    U+0365 COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER I character (ͥ)
    U+0368 COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER C character (ͨ)
    U+036A COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER H character (ͪ)
    U+036F COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER X character (ͯ)
    U+0020 SPACE character
    U+0488 COMBINING CYRILLIC HUNDRED THOUSANDS SIGN character (҈)
    U+0488 COMBINING CYRILLIC HUNDRED THOUSANDS SIGN character (҈)
    U+0488 COMBINING CYRILLIC HUNDRED THOUSANDS SIGN character (҈)


Interesting on chrome Version 24.0.1312.57 the tab crashes when i try to view the tweet but not here.

Can someone explain what is happening and why the tweet is affecting the tab and this post does not?

In the end both just render unicode characters. And it looks like only Firefox is able to display it correctly on OSX 10.8.


Chrome uses OS X's CoreText for rendering the tab titles, but uses its own text rendering engine for the site body. CoreText is the one that crashes on that unicode.


Meanwhile on Chromium 26.0.1384.0 (build 176849) on OS X Lion everything is fine for me. The titlebar is (appropriately for the typography) messed up, but there are no tab loading issues, cpu/memory spikes, or screen corruption. The closest thing to an issue I see is that it makes using Witch's window switch dialogue a bit ugly. Contrary to the thread on jwz's journal YoruFukurou 2.77 doesn't crash or misbehave for me viewing that tweet, but behind the scenes fontd uses up a decent chunk of cpu for several seconds. Perhaps Mountain Lion has more severe bugs in CoreText?


And apparently Twitter puts the content of a tweet in the <title> tag if you are on the page for a single tweet. Surprised that doesn't cause more problems.


> And apparently Twitter puts the content of a tweet in the <title> tag if you are on the page for a single tweet.

Nope, Twitter uses a shortened, ellipsized version of the tweet as <title> ... </title>. Still, if there's Unicode in the shortened version, it might have the same outcome.


After reducing the html-code in the site, it seems to me that it is not the title that causes the crash, but the p-tag with the specific css-style applied.


Wow that renders all sorts of glitchy on iPad/safari




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: