mistakes ยท post 05 of 7 in this channel
Saving one WTN market url and treating it as permanent
You saved an address that worked. Then time passed, and the saving turned into an assumption.
the three wethenorth market addresses
hn2paw7zfvndw3dovycegeqmvvnf4pl67b3g2p7pohjlzavloosh73id.onionhn2paw7zrgujyhnt6mgxlt2q6uhgbke4itpqitxhyfbumq3wtnckbuyd.onionhn2paw7zadwkcra3qzv5e4q547i7e5lvxm62cfxqftuqdu7moiu2ceyd.onionprinted the way they were handed over. no labels, no numbering, nothing here says which one to try first. this feed never opens them, so it has no status light, no percentage and no date of checking to give you.
where the assumption comes from
The normal web. A company keeps its domain, renews it, defends it, and forwards the old one if it moves. Nothing you bookmark ever really disappears.
That model is so reliable that nobody thinks of it as a model. It is just how addresses work, until you are somewhere it does not apply.
why it does not apply here
An onion address is a key, not a name. Nobody renews it and nobody defends it, and when a service stops answering to one there is no forwarding, because forwarding from a dead onion service is not a thing that exists.
The post on what changes and what does not separates the two ideas properly.
what the bad day looks like
Your one saved address does not answer. You have nothing else. You are now looking for a wethenorth address, in a hurry, while worried.
That is the single worst state in which to evaluate an address, and it is the state the one bookmark habit guarantees you will eventually be in.
The mistake was not made on the bad day. It was made when you saved one thing instead of three.
what holding the set changes
One address going quiet becomes mildly annoying instead of alarming. You try the next one and get on with your day.
It also removes the searching, which is where asking a search engine becomes tempting and where most of the real damage happens.
how to store them
As text, all three, somewhere you control and will actually look. Not a screenshot. Not one bookmark. Not memory.
Copy them from the block at the top of this post using the buttons. That is what the buttons are for.
the browser autocomplete trap
If you save one and rely on the address bar to complete it, your browser will happily complete a wrong string you visited once. It has no idea which of your history entries was the right one.
Autocomplete is a memory aid built for names, and it is being applied to keys. Paste from your own store instead.
The same applies to a bookmark saved a long time ago. It will open whatever it was pointed at without comment, and a bookmark cannot tell you whether the thing it points at is still the thing you saved it for.
That is not an argument against bookmarks. It is an argument for keeping the text as well, so that you have something to compare against when a saved shortcut behaves oddly.
Text you can read and check beats a shortcut you can only click.
The whole post is really one instruction. Store all three as text, somewhere you chose, and then never be in the position of looking for an address while worried about not having one.
replies
a reader askedIs bookmarking an onion address bad?
the answerBookmarking all three is fine and sensible. Bookmarking one and treating it as the address is the habit this post is about.
a reader askedHow often should I refresh my saved set?
the answerThis feed does not check addresses and will not tell you to build a checking routine. Holding the whole set is what makes churn survivable without any routine at all.
a reader askedMy saved address stopped working. Is the market gone?
the answerOne address going quiet says something about one address and nothing about the market. Try the other two, which is exactly what having them is for.
what this post is not Not a prediction that any particular address will stop working. It is about what your setup does on the day one does.