My computer mysteriously overheats reading the news at a particular site. Why?

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Well, this happens to me regularly towards the end of maybe 10 – 20 minutes spent reading the news at the venerable Associated Press’ “Top News” Web page, where one can get the latest news after most other news sites have stopped posting anything new for the day:

https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-news

So, after a while, the fans start running so hard I can hear them loud and clear, and this is most unusual in the case of my laptop, that is a pretty cool little machine all around. When I click off the site, the fans noise gradually subsides and some minutes later all is quiet again. And only ever hear them at all when visiting that AP site, or running a job with some really heavy number crunching, so it is expected to.

This only happens at that particular Website, where I do nothing else than  browse through the list of articles posted there and read, or maybe just glance through, some with headlines I find interesting, so I’m not running multi-player, highly dynamic games with ultra-high resolution 3-D rendering, or anything like that.

Perhaps someone here can tell me what may be the matter with a Website that can make a computer overheat like that just by reading something there for a while.

I am using Waterfox as browser and a MacBook Pro laptop running macOS Mojave. (Whether any of this matters or not, I have no idea, so I mention all this just in case it might help someone here find an answer to this particular puzzle.)

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Is there any increase in CPU usage when browsing only that website, that might explain the issue?
Do you have the same issue when you access the site from a different OS?

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How does the Mac behave when using Safari ? If the Mac isn’t overheating then the culprit is WaterFox.
Just checked the site with Windows 10 and Chrome. My laptop’s temp went down from 60c (on askwoody) to 53c.

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One of the ads is actually a cryptominer in disguise?

cheers, Paul

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OscarCP wrote:

Thanks for looking into this. If this problem comes back, I’ll be back too.

If it does come back, I would suggest opening the Mac equivalent of a task manager or process monitor and see if it’s possible to track down the process that’s sucking up the CPU.

That might give a better clue to what is happening. Is it the browser, a system process, etc?

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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OscarCP

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JohnW: “I would suggest opening the Mac equivalent of a task manager or process monitor and see if it’s possible to track down the process that’s sucking up the CPU.”

The Mac’s (approximately) corresponding application is called “Activity Monitor.”

That is a good idea and not just for trying to figure out something like this. At the very least, in this case, I may gain information that I can then show here to one of our Mac gurus, to see if the CPU vampire process is something legit and, if it is, how to make it behave, or if it is not, what would be the best way to block/ban it without serious collateral damage.

Thanks for this useful piece of advice.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Although this thread has been labelled “Resolved”, the actual solution is one I just found late yesterday night and, as promised in my last comment here, I am returning to explain what that solution is, so as to end this in a complete and informative way for others that might encounter the same problem and chance upon this thread.

Following JohnW’s advice, I have discovered that the problem was caused, for whatever reason, by the browser I was using, Waterfox ( Mozilla Project browser), that went from keeping the CPU busy from some 7% to some 30%, besides two other applications related to Waterfox, at least going by their names, that took, each, more than 10%. This happened when at that particular site I mentioned of the Associated Press, while reading an article there while a related video also run in a small box in the right sidebar. Clicking that box off stopped the rise of fan noise and started its decrease back towards silence.None of this happened when I used Chrome, for comparison. So it was Waterfox’s doing, all along.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Fred

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[Fred]

Thanks. I had the same experience with Firefox in Windows after I cleaned up the browsers with Privazer. I think FF has a build-in analysing “program” opening a couple of sub-instances of FF. Couldn’t find telemetry that quick. After a while online and restarting + rebooting the processor activity went down to normal and stays down, I think. It made me suspicious as always, there are things happening without the users knowledge or  options to find out.

As always, snifff

* _ ... _ *

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Fred.

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OscarCP

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Fred wrote:

I had the same experience with Firefox in Windows after I cleaned up the browsers with Privazer. I think FF has a build-in analysing “program” opening a couple of sub-instances of FF. Couldn’t find telemetry that quick.

Firefox runs web content for all tabs separately from the main Firefox process for increased security and performance. Each tab added starts another process.

Firefox also includes an internal task manager to show which processes are running. It’s located under the Firefox main menu > More > Task Manager.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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Fred

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Can a web site’s “busy-ness”, ie things running on the site which affects a local browser, also do this?   Years ago, I had a friend design his own web site, later on, dialed back a lot on his busy stuff.  My dial-up back then did not “like” his web site until after his dial-back.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Yes, executing too many java scripts can cause overheating it is also folly having too many running. Sometimes javascript can stall and seemingly execute an unchecked endless loop.

Your friend was wise to cut back on the amount of scripting.

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Thanks, anonymous. That is quite correct, although in my case the issue had a different cause. What was causing the problem and how to fix it is explained further up this thread, here  #2326741  . Also, after updating the OS, the problem has happened much less frequently.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Paul_T and Alex: About possible Cryptominer adds:

When one opens an AP article, beneath the end of it there are several of those “sponsored” articles that are really ads, but not like regular ads. Besides, I have the ad blocker on.

But something seems to have changed: After waiting a couple of weeks, I went ahead and installed, three hours ago, an update to macOS: security update 2020-007 , and the problem has not happened again. So maybe that was it?

Even if the problem really has gone away never to come back (a bit too soon to say) it is strange that was only happening when connected to one particular website and, as far as I know, to nowhere else. But Alex has tried that site and do not experienced the same problem, instead his computer cooled down …

Ergo: the likely, if very, very, very weird, explanation is that there was a problem with Waterfox that caused the computer to overheat because it could not handle something in the AP site, something that now the OS patch, very, very, very weirdly enough, has fixed. Somehow, this explanation does not seem right to me, but what do I know? I touch on wood and hope things stay this way.

Thanks for looking into this. If this problem comes back, I’ll be back too.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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