Just as reminder, the round is scheduled at 16:00 UTC. Top 1000 contestants advance to Round 2.

Initially I wanted to post it as a comment, but because there are already three threads about it, decided that I don't want to post three comments and should do a post instead.

So, I've finally updated the functionality of IOI Database and now there is IOI 2013 with a status of future olympiad. So, no results and tasks. Also participations in future olympiads doesn't count to country statistics and hall of fame, until the olympiad is concluded. So, the list of IOI 2013 contestants is available here. It already includes all the contestants I've seen in CF threads with the exception of Czech Republic due to the submitter not knowing the team for sure. I will update the contestants from all 4 threads on CF (I would like to say 3, but someone will post the team here, even if I ask to not post any teams in this thread to keep this information on CF spreading to minimal amount of places. I'm asking now, by the way), but you can also add teams or edit handles (like TopCoder ones) directly in the database.

I would also like to note that the contestants table is also available for every past olympiad. And yes, it's still not full in some years.

tl;dr: IOI 2013 Contestants

Today (09.03.2013) at 14:00 UTC the sixth (the last regular) contest of the Croatian Olympiad in Informatics. takes place. You can login/register here. Duration: 3 hours. Good luck!

Since I have now both participated in NEERC and NWERC, I have my personal opinions comparing the two semifinals, which I want to share.

Before I actually participated in NWERC, I always thought that advancing from NEERC to the World Finals is harder than from most of the other regions, because there are a lot of really good teams in NEERC. Now I'm thinking otherwise. If there are only 2-3 advancing teams then, in my opinion, a lot more luck is involved. I mean, I could see it from my own example — we had a very good start, leading for half of a contest, including freezing, but haven't solved one easy task in the end, and that was it and we dropped down to 4th — so a single fail is enough to fail all the contest. Yes, of course, I'm not trying to blame anyone for our own fails, but still it was just a single crucial fail. I'm pretty sure every year there are some teams, that had made that one mistake, and as the result are left out of World Finals. Now, at NEERC, because the quota is so big, if you're really fighting for the finals, you're allowed to make some crucial mistakes, and still qualify. Like my team did last year, for example, we had so many places that we thought we could get a lot better, and we still qualified. Again, this is all coming from my personal experience, but I believe that there are quite a considerable amount of teams suffering from this every year.

Hence, why do we even have such small semi-finals like NWERC, SEERC etc.? Why don't we unite some semi-finals, so that from each semi-final a reasonable amount of teams advances (like 10-15). This, in my opinion will give more fairness if united regions are balanced correctly.

Although I'm still writing it under the effect of yesterday contest, I would like that this post is viewed as a place for discussion of this what is my opinion is a problem. I hope that this is not viewed as merely a rant.

Recently I stumbled upon on a different method of grading the programs in programming — where instead of the time limit, instruction limit is used (the amount of assembler code instructions CPU has done). That was the first time I've stumbled upon it and have never before seen system like it.

Hence, I am very interested in hearing opinions about what are the advantages and disadvantages of this method. From a quick overview, there is a massive advantage because amount of instructions isn't dependable on the performance of CPU. Again, from a quick overview I couldn't see any massive disadvantages, but because I've never worked with it before, I would love to hear the opinions of community. Maybe someone has already dealt with this approach.

Thanks in advance!

Today (10.11.2012) at 14:00 UTC the second contest of the Croatian Olympiad in Informatics. takes place. You can login/register here. Duration: 3 hours. Good luck!

Today (20.10.2012) at 14:00 GMT the first contest of the Croatian Olympiad in Informatics takes place. You can login/register here. Duration: 3 hours. Good luck!

Last year I was deeply saddened by the fact that there isn't a unified place where one can view IOI results for all years. So I collected all the data I could find (and I found a lot) and put it in Excel. Then I edited the data so that the same person is written the same across all years. Afterwards I published it. There was hope that one day it could transform to something IMO already has. But, time was passing by, the site wasn't magically appearing and this summer I decided to do it by myself. Currently the website has reached a state when it could be launched for a public use, so I'm happy to announce that today it was presented on the conference at IOI 2012 and is available at the following address:

http://ioi.eduardische.com/

Despite the fact that the site is available for public use, it's still in development. Especially, it needs improvement in completing the database itself. Specifically, there is a need to add a contestants to delegations, who haven't won any medals (that information is now available not for many years) and in adding other delegation members (leaders, guests etc.). Because of that the website has the editing capabilities. There are 2 possibilities: edit the data of already existing in the database person and create a new one, if he or she is not available in the database yet. First one could be accomplished by using the "Edit" button on the participant's profile, the second one — by using the "Add" button on any page of the website. You can edit: name and surname, alternate name and surname (I would like to keep official names in latin-based characters — some diacritical characters based on latin characters (like č, ā, ķ) are available, but still, it is necessary to give the option to be able to write the person's name in hieroglyphs, for example), contact information (homepage, e-mail, LinkedIn, TopCoder, CodeForces, Twitter, Facebook), participations in olympiads and photos (at most one for each year). Of course, the database needs to be moderated so it can take some time for your change to appear (or not appear, but you'll know about the result) on the website. Please note, that currently the password that is given to you on creating a request is used only to revoke (cancel) your request.

So, I would be very glad, if those, who know the delegation of some countries at IOI, especially at 1990s-2000s, could complete that information in the database (maybe even with photos) and make it better. I ask that before you create a new person, make sure that he or she doesn't exist in the database (maybe with a little bit different spelling of the name) — take a look at delegations of the same country in neighboring years. If you want to request a change that isn't possible using the system, please, do not hesitate to contact me. Thanks in advance!

Does anyone know what happened with SnarkNews? Is it not renewed domain registration or something else?

Beacuse system testing is already going in chronological order, I came up with an idea to make this process more watchable by making it easier to understand what exactly is tested right now.

There are only 2 changes:

a) Showing above every table in system testing phase not only the percantage of testing completeness (by the way, this info also isn't shown above the table, only in contest summary), but also the time of submit for the last tested submission. This allows quickly understand, when your submit is going to be tested, if you wrote down your time of submit, obviously. Which brings me to

b) Show time of submit below the question mark during system testing as well.

In my point of view, these changes, which are not difficult to implement, will make the process of system testing more informative and exciting.