You can't build tcc from Nixpkgs if you are in the UK (github.com)

This won't affect most users as they will be using the cache.nixos.org substituter and haven't modified any package that pulls repo.or.cz repositories, but it's still amusing.

The UK should make exceptions for its legal firewall for scientific and economic access.

What is repo.or.cz? It sounds like the domain name is saying something but I don't understand.

I think the headline should more accurately be that repo.or.cz has a UK geo-block. I'm unclear why it has one, since it's highly unlikely either that the site contains anything that is covered by the OSA, nor that even if it did, the people running the site should care.

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Similar stuff happens often with Russian IP addresses, you just gotta deal with it I guess

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Is this supposed to be a big deal? I use NixOS as a source distribution (nix.settings.substituters = lib.mkForce [ ]) and I get failures when fetching sources pretty regularly. Sometimes the URLs are missing, sometimes the hashes have changed. My usual fix is to fetch the source from cache.nixos.org with nix copy.

I'd say the right answer is to move/add a content addressed model/system for obtaining sources.

Was playing around with the idea of p2p source hosting in package trees like nix and did a little weekend package prototype here of my own here:

https://github.com/magnet-linux/magnet-linux

Not really ready for prime time, but I think I have some interesting ideas there at least.