pdb1: This is an obvious new type of limiter intentionally installed to serve some kind of purpose involving having more control over our freedom to move with in the tabs and web clients forums , etc . It is not a bug .
"Control over freedom to move" seems a tad far-fetched, but it's not unthinkable as a way to reduce server access. Each tab contains a "live" Flash part which will cause server traffic, and I for one may have ten of them open when reading the news in the morning.
If the crazy loop would run without server access, it might help some.
But, why should this ugly method be necessary?