kostka's blog

By kostka, 4 years ago, In English

Don't miss Google Code Jam 2020 World Finals!

The competition starts today (2020-08-08) at 13:00 UTC and lasts 4 hours.

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +186
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 4 years ago, In English

This is just to remind you that the second round of this year's Code Jam will take place today (5/16) at 14:00 UTC.

1,000 highest-ranked contestants advance to the third round and you will receive the famous Code Jam tee if you are within these 1,000 contestants.

https://g.co/codejam

Good luck, have fun!

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +116
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 4 years ago, In English

...on being the first team in the history of ICPC that will hold the World Champions title for three consecutive years!

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +351
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 4 years ago, In English

Let me just copy the message from Bill Poucher:

March 31, 2020

RE: Status of the ICPC 2020 World Finals hosted by MIPT in Moscow.

Important Announcements:

The ICPC is rescheduling the ICPC 2020 World Finals Championship. We are targeting future dates that should not require rescheduling, well after international travel is restored.

Coming this June, the ICPC plans to kick off “ICPC 2020 World Finals Week” with some online activities and events. Details will follow shortly.

An update will be published on or before April 15, 2020.

Students have worked for years for the opportunity to compete together. Year after year, the ICPC sets the mark and these students raise the bar of excellence well above the mark. The mark set for the ICPC this year is for academia, industry, and community to deliver a great personal experience for these World Finalists who have been selected from 59,000 students from over 3,855 universities that span the globe.

We are committed to “put people first, with students first among people.” With the goodwill and the good graces of academia, industry, and global community leadership, we will get it done. We look forward to visiting with you online and person-to-person, even if the ICPC 2020 World Finals competition is ultimately scheduled in 2021. We look forward to meeting you in the near future.

Best,

Bill

Dr. William B. Poucher, Ph.D.

President, ICPC Foundation

[email protected]

Professor of Computer Science,

Baylor University

[email protected]

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +98
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 4 years ago, In English

Can someone fix the calendar? Such duplicates appear since I remember.

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +34
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 4 years ago, In English

Does anyone know if the host for EJOI 2020 has been found?

UPD: https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/71598?#comment-560701

UPD2: http://ejoi2020.ge/

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +28
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 4 years ago, In English

You've got only one more chance to participate in Google Kick Start 2019, so don't miss it!

Round H will start this Sunday (November 17) at 05:00 UTC and will last 3 hours.

Get ready and register now at g.co/kickstart.

 .

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +51
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 4 years ago, In English

Round G of Google Kick Start 2019 will start this Saturday (October 19) at 13:30UTC.

Get ready and register now at g.co/kickstart.

 .

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +62
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 4 years ago, In English

Hey Codeforces community,

have you ever seen any problems that use Wavelet Tree/Matrix or can be solved using these data structures?

Problems created especially for these structures don't count (for example they should appear in some competition).

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +72
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

I haven't seen any post, so let me announce that the Round E of Google Kick Start 2019 is happening this Sunday (August 25) at 5:00UTC. Get ready and register now at g.co/kickstart.

 .

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +69
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

During the downtime I realized that there's no other place to chat about sports programming and that's quite bad.

I also want to confess that I'm probably addicted to Codeforces.

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +534
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

I noticed that in recent years, a lot of "pass any coding interview"-ads started appearing out of nowhere (or maybe I live under a rock). On the other hand, I worked in many places and talk to many people and no one ever mentioned participating in such courses/bootcamps before. Therefore, I would like to ask if you know any successful stories, where a person went to some programming bootcamp without any prior experience and then started working in some well-known IT company?

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +84
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, history, 5 years ago, In English

What is this? Some kind of a cipher? A hint for the upcoming round? Is Mike trying to communicate something to us?

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +133
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

We probably all noticed that the rating inflation still occurs [citation needed].

In several games, there's a thing called "rating decay", when your rating decreases when you don't play ranked games (in our world: if you don't participate in contests). Please compare:

What do you think about implementing such a solution to the Codeforces rating? It should slowly drain some of the unnecessary rating (especially from people who do not participate anymore). Similar to many sources above, I think it should affect only highly rated users (maybe with 2100+ rating?). It can also serve as an encouragement to participate in contests more often.

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +43
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

Hey Codeforces,

summer is coming, so can we try to compile a list of participants of the IOI 2019?

The list can be found here: http://weaselcrow.com/pro/cf/ioi/19/

How to add or update data? Please fill the following form: https://forms.gle/ttDuP3SR7b8pqhxU6

Please note that the data is moderated, so it might take some time for your input to be visible.

Last year's post can be found here: https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/58939

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +148
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

If you didn't participate today in Codeforces, Atcoder, Codechef, and TopCoder rounds, can you even call yourself a real competitive programmer?

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • -29
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

It's almost here! KickStart rounds kick off this Sunday, March 24 with Round A at 4:00UTC. Get ready and register now at g.co/kickstart.

 .

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +8
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, history, 5 years ago, In English

The wait is over! Join us in our sweet sixteenth year for another CodeJam season of coding excellence. Register now at g.co/codejam.

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +159
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

Interested in growing your coding skills?

Kick start is a global coding competition offering programmers of all skill levels the chance to develop and hone their programming skills. Participate in one of our eight online rounds — or join them all!

Here’s how to join us

Register today!

Register before our upcoming practice round on February 23rd then check out the full schedule and add rounds to your calendar so you don’t miss out!

Practice makes perfect.

Get ready for an upcoming round by trying your hand past problems. Also check out our updated FAQ as we’ve made some changes that we think you're going to like!

Join the conversation.

Join our Facebook Group to connect with other participants, chat about problems post-round, and be a part of our community.

What are you waiting for?

Questions? Reach out to [email protected].

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +104
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

Today the Central European Regional Contest took place in Prague, Czechia.

And are you serious? One of the hardest regionals and:

  • there were two breaks when we couldn't touch computers (one lasting about half an hour),
  • contest lasted over 6 hours,
  • they changed the duration of the contest several times (in particular the end changed from 3:50pm to 3:30pm),
  • the workstations were so slow that our programs compiled sometimes over 5 minutes, with an average somewhere near one minute,
  • some teams had to reboot the workstations several times.

I have been to several contests before and I understand that organizing such contest might be hard, but I really think that this contest crossed several lines. One of the most traumatic experiences in my life.

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +346
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

Hello Codeforces,

as promised, tasks from the last year Polish Olympiad in Informatics are finally translated:

https://szkopul.edu.pl/p/default/problemset_eng/oi/25

Please ignore Polish titles, if you set the language to English (top right corner), you should see English statements.

I also want to recommend some problems, which (in my opinion) deserve some attention. I won't say why, because I don't want to spoil them, but if you have some spare time, please check out the following problems:

We are aware that the translations are not flawless, please let us know if we've made some mistakes.

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +171
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 5 years ago, In English

Hey Codeforces!

I made a thing and I want to share it with the community.

We wanted to keep track of achievements and submissions in our team and using Codeforces status page is not really handy. Therefore, I introduce to you Team dashboard.

Here you can find some kind of a timeline for each member of your team, showing last submissions, contests and even blog posts on Codeforces.

Using this script is pretty easy, just specify up to 3 handles in the address, separated by semicolons (please check below). Also please keep in mind that this script was made in 3-4 hours, so there is almost certainly a handful of bugs. Also, the script asks a lot of queries to the Codeforces API, so sometimes not all requests are answered. You should wait a couple of seconds and try again.

Visit right now and bookmark your team:

http://weaselcrow.com/pro/cf/team/?h=Radewoosh;Errichto;kostka

You can also compare yourself with your archenemy:

http://weaselcrow.com/pro/cf/team/?h=kostka;olekluka

Upd: fixed some bugs, including incorrect places and no response if no one from the team submitted anything.

Upd2: fixed bug with blocked blogs.

Upd3: you can now request as many days as you want, adding d argument, for instance:

http://weaselcrow.com/pro/cf/team/?h=mnbvmar&d=60

Please use it carefully, as requesting too many days will probably timeout.

Upd4: added team rating, as calculated by Codeforces.

Upd5: added problem ratings.

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +462
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 6 years ago, In English

Do you need even more Polish problems in your life? This year we are going to organize some contests on our educational platform (Szkopuł) and we decided to open them to the public. All contests will consist of problems from the previous editions of the POI, so you might be quite familiar with them if you ever solved problems on Szkopuł or on MAIN.

First contests (four of them) will imitate the first stage of the POI. Each contest will consist of three problems, last a week (start at 00:00 CEST on Monday, end at 23:59 CEST on Sunday) and have no feedback during the contest (but you have plenty of time to test your submissions). The first contest will start on September the 10th.

How to register? Just create an account on Szkopuł (https://szkopul.edu.pl/) and click on this invitational link: https://szkopul.edu.pl/c/tren18/join/RMQAKCjHhr1ceqVxywNIU5Kv/

Enjoy!

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +101
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 6 years ago, In English

Shoutout to Benq, who in the really awkward interview at the IOI closing ceremony thank Codeforces for its contests!

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +285
  • Vote: I do not like it

By kostka, 6 years ago, In English

CEOI 2018 is now a part of history!

Task statements, test data, model solutions, translations and some slides with solutions can be found at https://ceoi2018.pl/tasks/

We have two winners of CEOI 2018: Costin-Andrei geniucos Oncescu from Romania and Mariusz zdolna_kaczka Trela from Poland. Congratulations! Full scoreboard can be found at https://ceoi2018.pl/results/

The problems were added on Szkopuł and can be solved there (unfortunately, right now only in C/C++): https://szkopul.edu.pl/p/default/problemset_eng/ceoi/2018

We uploaded some photos to our Facebook fanpage: http://fb.com/ceoi2018

And finally, CEOI 2019 will take place in Bratislava, Slovakia!

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +82
  • Vote: I do not like it