[HN Gopher] You can't build tcc from Nixpkgs if you are in the UK
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You can't build tcc from Nixpkgs if you are in the UK
Author : RGBCube
Score : 137 points
Date : 2025-10-10 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| RGBCube wrote:
| 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.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The UK should make exceptions for its legal firewall for
| scientific and economic access.
| freedomben wrote:
| That would either create a gigantic loophole that makes the
| safety act toothless, or it would create a giant bureacracy of
| people who review and approve applications. Either outcome is
| sub-optimal.
|
| The real answer is to repeal this nonsense (IMHO as a non-UK
| citizen)
| noir_lord wrote:
| Agreed, as a UK citizen.
|
| It as always a stupid idea, see recent discord leak of ID's.
| driverdan wrote:
| The UK shouldn't have stupid ID requirement laws at all.
| tripplyons wrote:
| I agree, but I sadly believe these requirements will spread
| to other countries, including the US. The US Supreme Court
| recently ruled that Texas' ID law is somehow constitutional.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| "Constitutional" doesn't mean it's a good law, just that it
| is not prohibited for the state to make such a law. I
| personally don't like the law but I have a hard time seeing
| how it would be unconstitutional.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I felt the GP was making that same point.
| sterlind wrote:
| it should be unconstitutional because it's clearly a
| content-based restriction of speech, meaning that
| regulating it entails strict scrutiny. strict scrutiny
| requires Texas to use the least burdensome means possible
| to satisfy the state's legitimate interest in preventing
| minors from accessing obscene content - probably a home
| network filter appliance parents can opt into. this is
| what they held in _Paxton v. NetChoice_ (iirc.)
|
| instead, the Court contorted themselves into holding that
| adults have accessing content obscene to minors without
| furnishing their ID isn't protected speech. porn still is
| protected speech, but proving your age isn't protected
| speech. as a result, the law is content-neutral, not
| content-based.. somehow.
|
| it was a low point for the Court - clear activist
| justices legislating morality from the bench.
| tripplyons wrote:
| Previously, these kinds of laws violated the 1st
| Amendment, but the changes in the composition of Supreme
| Court justices have led to different rulings.
| exasperaited wrote:
| What do you mean "spread to"? The USA passed a dozen such
| bills into state law before this actually came into effect.
| That states compete to ignore each other's laws doesn't
| change a thing.
| tripplyons wrote:
| For the US, I'm referring to federal laws or more laws in
| more states.
|
| As for other countries, the EU just delayed the vote for
| "Chat Control" as recently as yesterday!
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| A lot of the groups pushing these laws actually have good
| motives (e.g. child abuse charities) but it's clear the
| current law and implementations are not the solution.
| rwmj wrote:
| So I think this law is stupid. But it's also popular, for the
| reason _" something should be done, this is something, so this
| should be done"_. I doubt that exceptions are going to be made
| until the effects are felt strongly by everyone. Geoblocking a
| .cz site used by a tiny number of developers is not having any
| effect.
| o11c wrote:
| And as always, the answer to "something should be done, but
| not this" is "then suggest something else that actually
| addresses the problem".
|
| The internet is full of dishonest "we've tried nothing and
| we're all out of ideas."
| debugnik wrote:
| > then suggest something else that actually addresses the
| problem
|
| As opposed to the original suggestion that doesn't actually
| address the problem? How is proposing that in the first
| place more honest than calling it out?
| chris_wot wrote:
| "Something should be done, so let's do something stupid and
| harmful, and all you critics have nothing to add so our
| stupid thing that causes harm is what you must accept".
|
| That's some incredible logic.
| o11c wrote:
| I never once said we had to settle for _this_ solution. I
| absolutely said that there is _a_ real problem, and the
| people in the best position to make a real solution have
| absolutely no desire to do anything about it.
|
| Remember that previous status quo was "I'd rather make
| money off of child abuse, because nobody is stopping us".
| This is the end result of self-regulation, so _show me
| something better_.
| saghm wrote:
| It's not logically inconsistent for someone to think that
| one proposal is worse than the status quo without having an
| alternative that's better than the status quo. Maybe the
| reason that nothing has been done yet is because every
| "solution" that's been proposed including this one, are
| worse than the problem it's supposed to solve.
|
| The internet is also full of bad takes like "the ends
| justify the means" and "the solution to this problem is
| obvious and no one has done it because they're
| evil/stupid/lazy".
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Is it popular? I'm a parent and none of my parent friends
| like it.
|
| I suspect this law isn't popular. Just the messaging of doing
| nothing is more unpopular. So it gets spun as this is
| popular.
|
| https://youtu.be/ahgjEjJkZks?si=mGE0k5QT3aXycHtU
| daveoc64 wrote:
| Polling has shown it is quite popular:
|
| https://yougov.co.uk/technology/articles/52693-how-have-
| brit...
| themafia wrote:
| When you phrase the question in such a way where people
| presume it will only target pornographic sites.
|
| If you asked them would they support the law if it
| happens to accidentally block useful sites that have ZERO
| pornography on them, I'm very sure, the results would be
| very different.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Polling for the question "websites that may contain
| pornographic material"
|
| Which is my point. The OSA isn't popular as a broad piece
| of legislation, but the "think of the children" aspect
| that something needs to be done to restrict access to
| pornography is popular.
|
| Watch the YouTube link I sent to better understand my
| point.
|
| Personally, I think even the pornography aspect is
| stupid. If the government couldn't stop me accessing porn
| when I was a kid back before the web was invented, then
| they're shit out of luck stopping kids these days. The
| problem isn't the law, the problem is parents want a way
| to diminish their own responsibility. It's the same tired
| bullshit we see time and time again of blaming everyone
| else rather than making ourselves accountable.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Except the UK didn't geoblock anything. This is just someone
| virtue-signalling about internet freedom from a country that
| has its own problems it should be addressing.
| mongol wrote:
| What is repo.or.cz? It sounds like the domain name is saying
| something but I don't understand.
| tasn wrote:
| Maybe Orcs?
| 0x457 wrote:
| It is a super simple git repo hosting/mirror based in EU.
| https://repo.or.cz
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| It's one of the older Git hosts, predating Github.
| netsharc wrote:
| Probably someone preferred the 3-level domain system (like UK's
| .co.uk, .gov.uk, e.g. bbc.co.uk) in .cz, and made .or.cz. This
| is probably before the time people thought "Oh we can make the
| domains be words, like 'del.icio.us', that'd be cute!"...
| rwmj wrote:
| 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.
| __float wrote:
| It's a bit hard to find, but going to the service's Mastodon
| account eventually leads one to https://repo.or.cz/uk-
| blocked.html
| RGBCube wrote:
| The linked GitHub isssue links to that page, too.
| subscribed wrote:
| They specifically listed their reasons in the geoblock message.
| As a someone impacted by this I applaud their decision. I also
| hope more high-profile cases like Wikipedia[1] will surface and
| expose the utter idiocy of the deliberately vague language of
| the language and the "guidance".
|
| [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/09/12/wikimedia-
| fo...
| bitdivision wrote:
| It hosts user uploaded content I would guess, so presumably the
| OSA could apply to them.
| ruuda wrote:
| It says so at https://repo.or.cz/uk-blocked.html:
|
| > UK's Online Safety Act 2023 would require us to do a
| prohibitively complicated risk assessment for our service.
| We're talking reading through thousands of pages of legal
| guidelines.
|
| > We're a volunteer operation and would likely be held
| responsible as individuals. There is talk of fines up to 18
| million GBP which would ruin any single one of us, should they
| get creative about how to actually enforce this.
|
| > Our impression is that this law is deliberately vague,
| deliberately drastic in its enforcement provisions, and
| specifically aimed against websites of all sizes, including
| hobby projects. In other words, this seems to us to be largely
| indistinguishable from an attempt to basically break the
| internet for all UK citizens.
|
| > If we could afford to just hope for the best, we'd love to.
|
| The way I understand this is that it's not feasible for them to
| assess how the legislation impacts them, so they would rather
| stay safe than risk having their lives destroyed.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Its such a ridiculous law and this outcome is entirely
| predictable, but bring this up with the proponents of it and
| they stick their head in the sand, to the point where I think
| they are perfectly happy with the UK not having a working
| Internet.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In this case the reaction is more ridiculous than the law,
| frankly...
|
| Edit: They are not in the UK and not dealing in anything
| risky. If they still wanted to demonstrate compliance they
| could download risk assessment templates (easily
| available), fill them, keep them on record for the
| hypothetical future time when they might be asked (they
| wouldn't). Claiming that it is too risky and complicated so
| better to ban the UK is either unreasonable or a militant
| statement but not a "logical reason."
| salawat wrote:
| Fuck around, find out. When governments start throwing
| around threats, is it any surprise the goodwill dries up?
| zwaps wrote:
| The reaction is utterly sound. What issue do you have
| with these very clearly laid out and logical reasons?
| chris_wot wrote:
| The reaction is entirely reasonable. The only way they
| can reasonably ensure they protect themselves is to
| ensure nobody in the UK can access their site.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That is very obviously not true... and a little unhinged.
| fragmede wrote:
| I'm not deep into this subject, so what's obvious to you
| isn't so obvious to me. Would you mind explaining a bit
| more on what's so obvious and why it's particularly
| unhinged?
| corobo wrote:
| I think we might need a bit of pain if we're going to
| dislodge this silly thing.
|
| For what it's worth I salute anyone blocking, whether
| through an excess of caution or just as a middle finger.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _which would ruin any single one of us, should they get
| creative about how to actually enforce this_
|
| actually, it would ruin all of them collectively should
| "they" get creative enforcing it.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Censorship causes self-censorship born out of caution.
|
| Would you pay their legal fees if they are sued? It's easy to
| say when you don't have your future on the line.
| rich66man wrote:
| Similar stuff happens often with Russian IP addresses, you just
| gotta deal with it I guess
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| One reason is DDoS attacks come overwhelmingly from those IPs.
| Plug them in your firewall, and it's calm all of a sudden.
| betaby wrote:
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/ddos-threat-report-for-2024-q4/
| mindslight wrote:
| 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.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >I'd say the right answer is to move/add a content addressed
| model/system for obtaining sources.
|
| Isn't that almost what the nix file already is while being
| legal. Having a cache of all build files is not legal to do.
| andrewchambers wrote:
| 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.
| RGBCube wrote:
| I'm actually working on my own OS agnostic package collection +
| system management software, and I've found https://radicle.xyz
| great for this. All repos depended on by the official package
| collection t will be on the radicle network.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| You should focus on the p2p part of code and object
| distribution. While nix is not perfect, people are not going to
| learn and adopt yet another package manager.
|
| A distributed git object cache is what is really needed at the
| moment.
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