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The impatient approach when a mirror is slow

The page is taking a long time to load. My impatience is now the biggest risk in the visit. This article is what I do about that.

Impatient approach 5 min read why no author line

The three addresses

Nexus Market publishes these three onion addresses. Present as supplied, in no order, with no ranking. This site does not probe them and shows no uptime figure.

nexusb2l7fmqnefwphyy7m5zjhlkytlbo7qbb5lu5dlczr3azgii2gyd.onion
nexusma2iqgauqqvjcgds4ckv5xbf272tkfagq4epojjhsgleqpwxiqd.onion
nexusabcd6tyfhdwilyitaqiri6tisj2v2hueyjuj6qkvd6azvi5tuqd.onion

The first thing I do is nothing

When the page is slow the first thing I do is nothing. I do not refresh. I do not click any of the tabs of the browser. I do not open a second tab on the same address. I let the page load or fail to load on its own.

Refreshing during a slow load restarts the circuit and often makes the load slower. Opening a second tab on the same address doubles the work Tor is doing on my end. Both are the impatient approach at its worst.

The nothing is the hardest part. Everything else follows from doing the nothing well.

What a slow load actually looks like

A slow load on a Tor onion looks like nothing happening for what feels like a long time, then either the page appears or the browser eventually gives up. The nothing happening is not a diagnostic on its own. Circuits build slowly sometimes. That is not a bug in the market.

The browser has its own timeout. If the page has not resolved in a reasonable time, the browser stops trying. That is a real signal to notice. A single browser timeout is not enough to give up on the mirror, but three in a row is.

What I try after the first slow load fails

I close the tab. Not refresh, close. Then I open a new tab and paste the same address again. This gives Tor Browser a fresh chance to build a working circuit for the address without carrying over whatever state made the last attempt slow.

If the second attempt is slow too, I close the whole window and reopen Tor Browser. This is a new identity, new circuits, everything reset. If the address is fine, this second reset usually gets it.

If the second reset is also slow, I switch to a different mirror. There are three addresses at the top of this article. Trying the second one on a slow day is what having three is for.

What I do not do when a mirror is slow

I do not paste the address into a regular browser to check whether it works there. It will not work there. Onion addresses do not resolve in regular browsers. The check will end on a search page, which is not what I want on any visit.

I do not open a search for the market to look for a fresh mirror somebody just published. Fresh mirrors from search results are exactly the kind of source I am not going to trust in a hurry. The three addresses at the top of this article are the source I have chosen.

I do not lower my browser security level to make the page load faster. That is not why the page is slow, and lowering the level trades a real thing for an imagined thing.

When I switch mirrors and when I stop

If the first mirror is slow after a fresh browser, I try the second. If the second is also slow after a fresh browser, I try the third. If all three are slow, I stop.

Stopping is the correct answer more often than switching for a fourth time. All three slow at once is a signal that the network is having a bad day for me, or that the market itself is having a slow moment. Neither is fixed by pressing harder.

Stopping means closing the browser and coming back later. It does not mean going to look for a new mirror. It means doing something else for a while.

The impatient trap when a mirror is slow

The trap is that slowness is what makes the impatient approach reach for shortcuts. A search for a fresh mirror. A quick check in a regular browser. A skip of the address bar comparison. Every one of those is a step down in the honesty of the visit.

The way out of the trap is knowing it exists. I read this article on days when the market is fast, so I remember to behave correctly on days when it is slow.

What a slow session actually costs me

  • Time. A slow load is longer than a fast one. That is the whole cost, if I do not do anything else.
  • Attention. A slow load takes attention I would rather spend elsewhere. That is the second cost, and it is small if I let the loading happen in the background.
  • The temptation to reach for shortcuts. This is the largest cost and it is invisible until I take a shortcut.
  • The confidence that any single load told me anything about the mirror. A slow load is not a signal about the mirror on its own, and treating it as one leads to bad decisions.

The honest end

A slow mirror is a slow mirror. It is not a scam, it is not a takedown, it is not anything specific. It is a network condition and it changes on its own timescale. The impatient approach that survives this well is the one that recognises the shape of it and does the small correct things rather than the many wrong ones.

When in doubt, close the browser, do something else, come back in an hour. That single instruction is the whole article, and it is the one I forget most often.

The opposite approach

The cautious approach that never signs in, a slow visit that never even signs in

What this article is not. This is not a claim that a slow mirror means the market is down. It is a claim about what I do with my hands while the page is loading.

Read another in this approach

The impatient approach that goes straight to the address barThe fast approach is a real approach. It is not the safe one, and I am clear about that when I use it. The impatient approach from a tab I already had openReusing an open Tor Browser is faster and messier than starting fresh. This is what the mess actually consists of. The impatient approach that skips the second checkOn some visits I do not cross check the address against a second source. This is an honest look at what that shortcut is and when I use it.
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