After a phone reboot, a nexus market address is still on paper

A phone reboot closes every open tab in tor browser and clears the circuit. A nexus market address on a paper note in a drawer did not reboot with the phone.

What it is

A phone reboot is a hard event for the browser. Every tab is gone. Any partial form is gone. The circuit is fresh. If the reader had a nexus market mirror open, the tab is not coming back on its own.

A paper note is a soft event for the reader. The note did not travel through the phone. If the reader wrote a nexus market address on a paper note before the reboot, the note is the surface that survived. The place card for a paper notebook covers the tradeoffs of writing addresses down that way.

Lifeline

What survived the reboot

• The paper note. Ink on paper does not lose state.
• Any bookmark in the browser file, because the file is on the phone storage and not in browser memory.
• A screenshot in the camera roll, if the reader had taken one.
• The panel above, which is served fresh with every request to this site.

What did not survive

The open tab

The last active session on a mirror is gone. Retyping the address from paper is the next step.

The captcha timer

Any captcha in flight is gone. A fresh one will load on the login page.

The login session

The session cookie is gone. The reader will need to sign in again from the fresh tab.

The address bar history for the session

The address is on paper. This card is about the retype.

How to retype from paper

1. Put the note flat on a hard surface and read the first block.
2. Type it into the address bar without looking away. A glance halfway through a v3 onion is the shape a typo takes.
3. Read the second block, type it, and so on to the end of the run.
4. Cross the address bar against the paper before pressing enter.
5. If the reader is not sure a character on the paper is a letter or a digit, cross it against the panel above, block by block.

The shapes of a bad retype

A retype from paper has three ordinary failure modes. The first is a swapped letter, usually near a place where the reader glanced away. The second is a doubled character, when a finger stayed a beat too long on the same key. The third is a run that reads right at a glance but has the middle of one block reversed. All three fail the same way at the address bar: the string either does not check out as a v3 onion at all, or checks out into something that is not the market.

The catch is on the reread, not on the retype. A block by block cross against the paper before enter closes each of the three cases.

How to keep a paper note honest

One line per slot

Three lines on the note in the order the site publishes them keeps the note in step with the panel above.

A vanity head as a label

A short header of four characters, the ones that spell nexus, keeps a reader from confusing the note with another market note.

A pen that does not smudge

Ink that survives being folded into a pocket keeps the block reads honest.

Rewrite on rotation, do not overwrite

When the top slot rotates, cross the old line out and write the new one under it in the same hand. That leaves the reader with a record they can trust.

What to check before pressing enter after a retype

1. Count the characters in the address bar. The run before .onion should be 56 characters.
2. Read the first block of the bar and compare it to the first block on the paper.
3. Read the last block of the bar and compare it to the last block on the paper.
4. Walk any block that is not the first or last of the run.
5. If every block matches, cross the bar against the panel above too, block by block.
6. Press enter only after all three sources agree, or reset if any block disagrees.

Engagement

What this card does not say

• It does not recommend paper as the best surface.
• It does not name any note taking app, phone model or operating system.
• It does not put a date on the reboot or on the note.
• It does not treat a lost tab as anything other than a lost tab.

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