Should I really get the latest tip before I start work?

This is like the third+ time this has happened, but it was working fine before but then I ran hg pull -u and it stopped working. I thought maybe my changes didn't merge well together with the latest tip or something so I deleted it and redownloaded it, but sure enough, the same problem. It says something is missing and is having a 401 error. I asked a question in the bespin channel of irc but no one is answering, so I will try again tomorrow. Last time this happened, it fixed itself after no time at all; let's hope this time it's even shorter than last.