Following 'Our Winners: TopCoder Open 2019', I am publishing the problems from the Algorithm track (classic competitive programming. You have one and a half hours to solve three problems in Java, C#, C++ or Python.) 1. Pie for Six Problem Statement Time limit — 4 seconds. You have a pie. If viewed from above, the pie takes the shape of a (strictly) convex polygon. You are given the coordinates […]
The TopCoder Open 2019 finals took place in Houston from November 13 to 16, where Gena Korotkevich (Belarus) secured first place in both competitive tracks: Algorithm and Marathon. No one has achieved this in a single year before! This is a fantastic conclusion to the 2019 season, in which Gena had already triumphed in the finals of two other major competitions: Google Code Jam and […]
I’m sure the title sparked a healthy reaction—"here we go again..." But allow me to capture your attention for 5-10 minutes, and I’ll try not to betray your expectations. The structure of the article will be as follows: a stereotypical statement is taken, and the "nature" of the stereotype’s origin is explored. I hope this will allow you to look at your data exchange paradigm choices in your projects from a new angle. To […]
Retrospective Scope, composition, and structure of cyber threats to applications are rapidly evolving. For many years, users accessed web applications over the internet using popular web browsers. At any given moment, it was necessary to support 2-5 web browsers, and the set of development and testing standards for web applications was fairly limited. For instance, almost all databases were built using SQL. To […]
Recently, Microsoft introduced a new operating system called Windows 10X. According to the developer, it is based on the regular 'ten', but it also differs significantly from it. In the new OS, the classic 'Start' menu will be removed, along with other changes. However, the main innovation will be the unification of the desktop and mobile versions of the OS. And while it is still unclear what exactly is in store […]
Microsoft plans to integrate several Google services with its email service Outlook.com. Some time ago, Microsoft began testing the integration of Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Calendar on certain accounts, as shared by one of the participants in this process on Twitter. During the setup, users need to link their Google and Outlook.com accounts, after which Gmail, Google […]
The mobile operating system Android is based on the Linux kernel, but it is not standard; it's heavily modified. It includes 'upgrades' from Google, chip manufacturers Qualcomm and MediaTek, as well as OEM producers. Now, reportedly, the 'corporation of good' intends to transition its system to the main version of the kernel. At this year's Linux Plumbers Conference, Google engineers conducted […]
Mozilla has announced the expansion of its initiative to offer monetary rewards for identifying security issues in infrastructure elements related to the development of Firefox. The bounty amounts for discovering vulnerabilities on Mozilla's websites and services have been doubled, and the bounty for identifying vulnerabilities that could lead to code execution on critical sites has been increased to $15,000 […]
An update for the Solaris 11.4 operating system, SRU 15 (Support Repository Update), has been released, offering a series of additional fixes and improvements for the Solaris 11.4 branch. To install the fixes proposed in the update, simply execute the command 'pkg update'. In this release: Oracle Explorer has been updated to version 19.4, a toolkit for building detailed profiles of system configuration and status; new modules have been added […]
A vulnerability (CVE-2019-18934) has been identified in the Unbound DNS server, which can lead to the attacker's code execution upon receiving specially crafted responses. Systems are only affected when Unbound is built with the ipsec module ("—enable-ipsecmod") and ipsecmod is enabled in settings. The vulnerability has been present since version 1.6.4 and has been fixed in the Unbound 1.9.5 release. This vulnerability arises from the passing of unescaped characters when calling the shell command ipsecmod-hook, […]
Coreboot 4.11 has been released — a free alternative to proprietary UEFI/BIOS firmware used for the initial hardware initialization before handing over control to a payload, such as SeaBIOS or GRUB2. Coreboot is very minimalist, and it also provides extensive options for embedding various payloads like the coreinfo utility for detailed system information and the game Tetris, as well as floppy disk operating systems: Kolibri, FreeDOS, MichalOS, Memtest, […]
Nearly all modern software products consist of multiple services. Often, long response times between service channels become a source of performance issues. The standard solution to this kind of problem is to package several inter-service requests into one bundle, known as batching. If you are using batching, you may not be satisfied with its results in terms of performance or code clarity. This method is not so simple […]