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Round E starts in less than 12 hours (on August 22nd at 03:30 UTC).

In the last contest, both tourist and ko_osaga copied the author's solution from the problem Matrix from Petrozavodsk Winter Camp 2013 Warsaw U contest: 123723552 and 123727448 respectively. You can easily verify that they didn't write this code themselves by looking at the comments in these solutions (written in Polish).

This is against the Codeforces rules. According to this post, we have the following rules:

Solutions and test generators can only use source code completely written by you, with the following two exceptions:

1. the code was written and published/distributed before the start of the round,
2. the code is generated using tools that were written and published/distributed before the start of the round.

and

Currently, the only reliable proof is the presence of code on the Internet and the presence of the used edition in the cache of well-known search engines.

For example, this rule accepts the use of the code from the website http://e-maxx.ru/ if the code was written and published/distributed before the start of the round. With the help of search engine caches, it can be easily shown that such code doesn't violate the rules. Similarly, it is permissible to use the code from a book/article that was published before the contest. On the other hand, using team reference code (for example, prepared for ACM-ICPC World Finals) is not allowed if there is no reliable and objective way to prove that the code was written before the contest.

This code is not available on the Internet publicly and was never published anywhere (at least I am not aware of that). There are two ways to get access to this code: either ask the author or have admin access to one of the contests where this problem is used. In my opinion, this falls into the second category (same as team reference code), as only a small number of people have access to this. Moreover, imagine if a similar issue would occur to some unknown, green or grey contestants. Their solutions for sure would be skipped. Please stop this elitism and ratism and treat all the contestants equally.

I am not saying that we should ban them or skip their solutions, but we should make sure that the rules are clear and fair and there are no exceptions. Maybe if you are using a third-party code, you need to add a comment mentioning the original source of the problem and this solution doesn't have to be widely available, but can be verified upon the request of someone investigating this potential cheating case? If that's the rule that we currently use, please add this to the aforementioned blog.

A long time ago I had to write a master's thesis. Of course, my thesis was about sports programming. To be precise: I described what the whole thing is about, including famous competitions and platforms, and described many techniques (with applications) that weren't really known to wider audiences (outside this community and some of them also to Um_nik apparently).

See Table of Contents, if you are interested in what exactly was included.

Now I am wondering what to do with this work. For instance, would you be interested in buying this if I ever published this as a book?

Disclaimer: The following is my personal opinion.

From the interviewee's standpoint: there already exists a huge database of problems used for interviews in different companies. If you want to prepare for interviews, please use them. No one needs this one problem you got on your interview. Also, if you haven't solved the problem during the interview, learning how to solve it from someone else won't help you. Take some time yourself, try to find similar problems. Maybe ask your friends, but do not post this problem online. You won't also learn anything just from reading solutions.

From the interviewer's standpoint: as problems are "leaked", you have to frequently change your problems, so you waste your time to prepare these new problems and it feels really bad when you cannot ask any of your fully-mastered problems (for which you know all the caveats, for instance how to hint people properly in the right direction). I even dare to say that the necessity of using a new, fresh problem has a negative impact on the interviewees, as their experience is worse compared to if you could use your old, tested problems.

So please DO NOT SHARE YOUR INTERVIEW QUESTIONS.

I wasn't aware of how few people participate in SRMs nowadays (reference).

What happened to this platform and can they try to change something to come back?

But seriously, every time I see an announcement of a new round, I grab popcorn and see what was wrong this time.

Join our online coding competition and tackle fun problems designed by Google engineers! ➡️g.co/kickstart

Round C starts in less than 24 hours (on May 23rd at 11:00 UTC).

You should already know the drill: https://forms.gle/JfkTpZYKhXqwTuat5

UPD: The list is here: https://kostka.dev/ioi/21/.

If you see any mistakes, either fill the form again with the correct data or message me.

For reference, the list from the previous year: https://kostka.dev/ioi/20/

What if all these cheating groups are run by Telegram to advertise their platform?

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

Round B starts in less than 24 hours (on April 18th at 23:00 UTC).

Join our online coding competition and tackle fun problems designed by Google engineers! ➡️g.co/kickstart

Looking for a way to stay connected, try something new, and have a little fun? The Kick Start 2021 season has begun!

Kick Start offers programmers of all skill levels the opportunity to boost your skills through a series of intriguing algorithmic and mathematical problems designed by Google engineers. Each round starts fresh, so give any one of our 2021 online rounds a try — or join them all!

Join

• Create a Coding Competitions profile and then register for Kick Start.
• Check out the full schedule and add rounds to your calendar so you'll never miss out.

Prepare

• View our tutorial video to learn more about the competition platform and some useful tips and tricks.
• Practice makes progress! Try your hand at past problems and read through our FAQ if you have a question.

Connect

Be part of the #KickStart community by joining our Facebook Group to meet other participants, chat about past problems, and hear about the latest updates!

Questions? Reach out to [email protected].

We hope you’ll join us for some fun practice. What are you waiting for?

The last round of Google Kick Start 2020 will take place this Sunday (November 15) at 3:00 UTC and will last 3 hours. Make sure you participate!

See you at g.co/kickstart.

UPD: Thank you for participating! Analysis can be found in the problem view. See you next year!

Round G of Google Kick Start 2020 will start this Sunday (October 18) at 12:00 UTC and will last 3 hours.

See you at g.co/kickstart.

As in previous years, the list of all the great people who will compete in the most prestigious competition for high school students can be found here: https://kostka.dev/ioi/20/.

If you want to add new participants, please use this form: https://forms.gle/mzzku4dcQXqSD4um8.

If you want to report any mistakes or problems, please either fill the form above with correct data or add a comment under this post.

Don't miss Google Code Jam 2020 World Finals!

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

• Hub: https://goo.gle/cjlivestream
• Finalists: https://codingcompetitionsonair.withgoogle.com/events/code-jam-2020-world-finals/speakers
• Scoreboard: https://codingcompetitions.withgoogle.com/codejam/round/000000000019ff31

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!

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

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]

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

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

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

UPD2: http://ejoi2020.ge/

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.

.

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.

.

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).

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.

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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.

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?