UPD: schedule, list of guests, and questions form for guests added.
UPD2: link to the stream: https://youtu.be/WZKOdorb1Dg
I know that lots of you were saying that Codeforces should stay out of politics when there were lots of blog posts supporting Ukraine a couple of weeks ago. Well, I respect your opinion, but I can't agree. If you see a binary search tutorial on the "Top" page, do you complain about it if you're not interested in binary search, or do you just ignore it? And at the end of the day, it's not really about politics, but about people's lives.
Having said that, I'd like to invite you to join my 8-hour long live stream on YouTube against the Russian invasion of Ukraine next Sunday (27th of March) from 10 AM till 6 PM Ukrainian time (be careful, 27th of March is a daylight saving start in Ukraine and a lot of other countries, but it may not be the case for your country, so check your timezone using this link).
Сurrent plan is (all time periods are in Ukrainian timezone; if you want to ask questions, go here):
10:00-10:30 — Intro, tricky interesting problems for chat
10:30-11:00 — Interview with Matt tehqin Fontaine (author of Algorithms Live! youtube channel)
11:00-11:30 — Solving problems blindfolded
11:30-12:00 — Interview with Nikita nskybytskyi Skybytskyi (author of Nikita Skybytskyi youtube channel)
12:00-13:00 — Lecture: Everything I know about lambda optimisation (aliens trick)
13:00-13:30 — Interview with Alex Um_nik Danilyuk (ICPC 2020 champion team member, author of umnik_team youtube channel)
13:30-14:30 — Solving problems blindfolded
14:30-15:00 — Interview with Kamil Errichto Debowski (author of Errichto and Errichto2 youtube channels)
15:00-15:20 — Lunch break
15:20-16:00 — Cool little algorithms nobody talks about
16:00-16:30 — Interview with Anton antontrygubO_o Trygub
16:30-16:45 — Talking to chat
16:45-17:15 — Interview with Jay Geothermal Leeds (author of Jay Leeds (Geothermal) youtube channel)
17:15-17:45 — Interview with Ildar 300iq Gainullin (IOI 2019 2nd place)
17:45-18:00 — Outro
And during this stream, I'd like viewers to donate money to Ukraine. Here I'd like to get some help from you. Please, leave some organizations that help Ukraine to which we could donate money in the comments. Also, I'd like to have a counter on the stream that says how much money was donated by the viewers, but I don't understand how it is possible if they will not be donating it to me. If you know how to do it, also suggest your ideas. Of course, it's possible to donate the money to me, and then at the end of the stream I could send them to charity organizations, but first of all, you should 100% trust me in this case, and second of all, I'm a Russian citizen, so it's really hard for me to have any kind of PayPal, etc at the moment to collect money :)
If you are my friend or anyone who would like to be a guest on this stream, please DM me on Codeforces or Telegram. Don't be shy! If you have any ideas on what I should do during this stream, also write them in the comments.
Hope I'll see you in a week! NO WAR!
++respectI did some research a month ago and it was easiest to go with the Red Cross through https://justgiving.com/. They give you links to notifications, progress and recent donations — all of which you can import to OBS. See my stream https://youtu.be/V9DSuWMqcqY. I can help you with the setup (and can briefly join as a guest if you wish).
8 hours is a lot of time. If it wasn't for a noble cause, I would suggest shortening it to 3-4 hours. You might be exhausted, and it's generally hard to organize and conduct such a stream. You need to solve problems, handle the guests, talk with the chat, spot the donations, etc.
It would be great to find a company to sponsor such a stream and match all the donations. Maybe reach out to Codechef or Harbour Space?
8 hours is a lot of time but doable, I still remember Mimino going through all of the project euler problems in a 24 hours live stream and doing it in multiple languages, it was a lot of fun
- https://blog.hackerrank.com/recap-how-mimino-solved-78-project-euler-problems-in-under-24-hours/
- https://mirror.codeforces.com/blog/entry/17529
not able to find the stream anymore :/
Thank you for your suggestions! I will look into the website you provided. Sure, it will be great if you come to the stream.
I understand that 8 hours is a long time, but from my experience, I think I will be able to handle it.
The idea about a sponsor sounds reasonable. I'll try to handle it.
I wonder for what purpose you are raising money in support of Ukraine? To finance the supply of weapons to Ukrainian army to kill Russian soldiers or to help civilians which are suffered from the war?
Your choices are kinda provocative, but shortly the second one.
peltorator decided to avoid confrontation and I totally understand it. But I will make things clear for you. The weapons supplied to Ukraine are not to kill Russian soldiers but to protect my homeland from invasion. Even if it sounds similar to you — there is a difference. The real cause of all the murders is the person who gave the order to attack Ukraine, peaceful and independent country. Thing about it in that way.
Just to be clear: I avoided the confrontation because the presented options were manipulative. The reason why I choose to donate to a non-military organization is that it's not my own donation but from viewers. It has nothing to do with my position. And also to be clear: this stream is against the Russian INVASION of Ukraine (I think I didn't make it clear in the blog post).
Yeah, that's why I "totally understand it". And it makes perfect sense because that way the viewers will support peace but not a war (from any side). Thanks again for that and for your position!
So many great initiatives! In behalf of all Ukrainians — I would like to say thank you peltorator, Errichto, guys from NEAR and many others in this community for your willing to help, support and stand with us in such a dramatic moment of our history
Great idea, Egor!
I've been somewhat vocal that CF should stay out of politics, so here's my response to this part:
I don’t complain about a binary search question in recent actions because binary search is a part of competitive programming. Short of contests being canceled or moved around, geopolitical events are not. This isn’t to say I don’t support Ukraine; I do. But I don’t think CF is the appropriate stage for a political debate.
(updated because I've been told in a DM that without the quote, this comment looks like it's against the stream or against this post's existence, which it isn't)
But this blog is actually not only about geopolitical events, it's also about CP. You can't really complain about it.
PS: At least it doesn't look like
Dear russian friends - a personal message from peltoratorIt's true, I'm always down for some CP streams :)
Hi, I guess you are addressing me as well here. I'm guilty, I agree. But I think personal exchange is always important, in everything we do. Now more than ever, I think it is important that we communicate with each other so that we continue to see that there are actual people on the respective other side. I share your concern that discussion can become vicious and resentful. But I don't see this happening here, at least not so far. People, though with strongly different opinions, almost always act respectful, try to listen to each other and provide their most convincing arguments. This is such a diverse, randomely assembled community that barely exists on other platforms. And other plattforms are to a large part already disconnected. It would be a shame not to use this open space here. If this would become full of personal insults, of people shouting over each other, I would agree, there is no benefit to it. But my impression is that people here are much to civilized for that. Of course, correct me if I'm wrong.
I appreciate the thoughtful response. For the record, your post was one of the least distasteful ones from my perspective.
I would submit that this is because they allow politics to become a primary issue while we, for the most part, have not. When people viscously disagree on the topic of conversation, things become polarized.
To me: "You are very insensitive and ignorant"
Followed by: "You are absolutely right. He will not understand the situation like sleepy Joe (both are from usa). God bless Ukraine. You guys are heroes."
Most people are well behaved, but some like kostka are not, and will become viscous and mean to those who disagree with them. I don't have time for a sparing match, so I try to stay away from it, but what I've noticed is people only really get rewarded for this kind of stuff in politics when there's some "other side" who it's somehow okay to personally attack because you disagree with them.
kostka just wants to get his contribution by any means. I don't believe that he seriously thinks the way he wrote these comments.
I don't fucking care about my contribution at all. Feel free to set it to 0 permanently. You can do it by downvoting this comment into oblivion.
Oh my, I didn't think you would take the bait so easily. Your response really shows that you
definitely don't care about contribution and definitely not seeking other's attention and approval:)I was almost sure that your first clickbait
Russian propagandapost was just to get shitloads of attention and approval, but now you proved me wrong! Oh great kostka, I am sorry that I ever doubted you. orz orz orz orzHow would you like clickbait title
Polish people are using ukrainians as cheap workers on factories and strawberry fieldswith similar passive-aggressive content inside it? Do you think it will get a lot of green arrows from random people too? I don't care about contribution, I would just like to see how people approve my blogpost with green arrows. Or maybe do you think blogposts likeHarry Potter and magical segment treeswill get more attention? Please teach me, oh great kostka orz orz orz how not to care about contribution.Does " your opinion is very insensitive and ignorant" sound better? To me, it is rather obvious that you were not personally attacked there. It was your opinion, and a very specific one, that caused the argument.
I also understand why some people react rather aggressively to your rhetorics -- because the only ones getting attacked here are Ukrainian citizens. Not gonna lie, I myself was infuriated when I first read your post and hardly managed to keep my calm. I strongly disagree with the idea of not discussing important issues, because this idea helps in the creation of information bubbles.
I know that’s an awful thing to say, but I’m pretty sure that if there was a war in the neighbouring state to you, you wouldn’t shut up about it on every platform where you can reach people. You are not allowed to have an opinion on the matter, for you it is an insignificant conflict somewhere very far away, so shut the fuck up.
I now see that Egor is planning to invite SecondThread as a guest. I think that it is a mistake and I will not participate in the same event with him. There can't be different positions on killing people.
I don't think he has an outrageous position on killing people. He merely said that he didn't like the amount of posts related to the invasion. You should know a thing or two about saying insensitive stuff.
To be clear, I don't have a different position on this than you do. View #1 (mine): I don't think it's morally okay for Russia to be invading Ukraine, and I wish for the safety of the Ukrainian people and of their land, as well as the Russians who didn't support this who it seems are now taking a brutal economic hit from the decision to escalate the conflict.
On not expressing this earlier: I've been told "I'm not allowed to have an opinion on this matter... So [I should] shut the f up". I haven't gone around proclaiming my opinion on CF because I'm a programmer not a politician and I don't think people should care what I think about it, and I don't think my opinion on it matters much anyway.
My original comment here was in response to the beginning of the blog post on why the people who say CF should stay out of politics (like me) are wrong because a boring binary search question/tutorial is just as valid as a post that is gasoline for a political debate.
View #2 (also mine): I believe that on a website about competitive programming, a question on binary search is more valid than a post doing nothing but declaring one's political stance. I understand there are people who disagree with me on this view and that's fine. We can discuss it elsewhere; it's possible I'm wrong on it just like with anything. But I want to be clear that I don't think killing civilians defending their homeland just because you want to control it is okay. (Specifically to your comment, there are limited cases in which killing people is okay, and I'm sure you agree with me here in this Um_nik, such as killing invading soldiers when you have the moral high ground and they would otherwise cause harm to your land and family)
I'm not opposed to a coding stream or to posts like this which are about programming and whose political side are more than gasoline to be thrown on a political fire.
Finally, I want to say that it isn't contradictory to hold these two views. It's totally reasonable to argue that there are places for politics and other places where it doesn't belong.
Ok, I think I have to say something about this situation. I am really sad that the agenda is moving away from uniting around fighting against the war to disagreements inside the community. But in some sense, I am the one who is responsible for this confrontation to happen. So let me explain, what happened from my perspective, what my decision is, and why I am making this decision. I understand that there is no right decision in this situation. It is a stalemate. But I have to make one, and I would like to make sure that everybody understands that the main goal for me is in the name of this blog post: "8-hour Long Stream In Support Of Ukraine", and my decisions are driven by that goal and nothing else.
When I was inviting guests, my choices were based on three things: how interesting the guests are for viewers in general, how important the voices of these guests are in the current situation, and the last one is simple: they should be against the war. And I think that I did a great job. All the guests meet all these criteria. But there are always buts. I think that it is really important to give full support to Ukrainian citizens right now, and I strongly disagree with people who are saying that we should avoid political-only posts on Codeforces. And in this area, my research on guests was not complete. SecondThread has a different opinion on this situation. I personally think that it is ignorant and unthoughtful, but at the same time, it doesn't make him a bad person in my eyes. I just think that he is wrong in this situation because it is hard for him to understand what people who are actually involved in the situation feel. And here I would like to make a remark. I don't want to speak on behalf of Ukrainians, and I don't have the right to. At the end of the day, I am a Russian citizen. But it is my opinion.
When I was inviting SecondThread, I didn't know about his position on this topic. If I am being honest, if I knew that, I wouldn't invite him as a guest to the stream. Why? Because I wanted this stream to unite people against evil, and not to make people argue inside the community again. But I didn't know that. And I invited him. So what's next? I was thinking about what to do in this situation before I announced the guests. I was leaning toward ignoring this disagreement because SecondThread was very understanding in this exact situation, supported this exact CP+"politics" stream, wanted to help, and agreed to join the stream even though it was super early for him. Yes, we may disagree on a fundamental level about something, but we all agree about this stream. I thought that it is more important that in the moment we are all supporting the same thing. We should be united and should not silence each other after giving an opportunity to speak up.
But then, when I announced the complete list of guests, we got a complaint from Um_nik. I don't have a clear position on whether I agree with him or not. Probably, in a regular situation, I wouldn't agree with him here. In a regular situation, I would say that he is being too hard on SecondThread, but! In this situation, I can forgive him everything, because he is a victim. He was there. He was forced to leave. He saw everything. It's his pain. So I completely understand and can forgive him the fact that he's being too hard. I don't support it, but I can't blame him.
Having said all that, I think that in this situation his voice is more important. He should be heard. As I said, in a different situation I would probably let him go, but in this situation, I can't. I'd like to stress out the fact that it honestly has nothing to do with "who is more important for attracting viewers", it is about who should be heard if there is a choice.
So I sadly have to announce that we won't have SecondThread as a guest on the stream. I asked for their opinion from some guests and analyzed the positions, but it is my decision, so blame me if you don't agree with it :)
What were my other options? The first one was to let go of Um_nik. I honestly couldn't do it. I would have betrayed my principles in choosing a person with a "wrong" (in my opinion) position against the one who definitely should be heard. Another option I was thinking about was to exclude both Um_nik and SecondThread from guest list, but in the end, I thought that it wouldn't make sense.
I hope I justified your all trust in this situation. I am very sorry that this situation happened. Besides that, the stream will be held exactly the same as it was planned to.
I am so tired of people telling me to shut up because they don't want to hear about things that are slightly outside of their comfort zone. I have a lot of friends both in Ukraine and Russia and this whole situation is very close to my heart.
I don't care if I use harsh language or make people feel attacked. I really wish I could speak without emotions, but my blood is boiling when I see such comments.
You are right, sneaky kostka
Re donations — I'd suggest https://novaukraine.org/ — they have local folks on the ground and are more efficient in getting help where needed than large orgs akin Red Cross (that also spend a fair chunk of money they get on ads). Last week Jack Dorsey (founder of Twitter) donated them 1M USD. And as a bonus, this fund is co-founded by a gold ACM ICPC medalist (of 2008 if memory serves me).
Here is a website created by the most popular fintech bank in Ukraine, where you can donate money for Ukraine's Armed Forces.
https://uahelp.monobank.ua/
To the person that schedualed the following codeforces round to overlap with this stream: Why :((((((( ?
Thank you for doing that!
Ideas:
You may add feedback to your form. Like:
Could you please expand on your idea? I didn't really get it.
In the form you shared people may ask questions.
Idea is to add city and who person is in the form. And when your guest is answering the question you may say that let's say smthing like: "Question from Prague student". or "Question from Zurich, company Google"
Maybe name is also fine. (Also optional).
Oh, ok, I got it. Added it.
Very interesting guests!
I think that there are more ways to help Ukraine,and it is just a programming contest website.
I think I didn't ask
I mean codeforces should be away from politics.
We should just enjoy coding and that's why codeforces exist,don't you think so?
And I also think that ukrainians should stop being such weaklings and stop living in a warzone if they hate it so much. We think so much alike
No, I do not think that, just trying to give a very bad joke to strawman their stupid argument
Thanks to everybody for joining me today and thanks to everybody who donated!
My impression is that you did a good job as a presenter. It was professional, pleasant and balanced. Thanks :)
I want a 8-hour Long Stream In Support Of Russia
In support of the Russian people, excellent idea! Speakers should address the importance of human rights, discuss the suffering of political prisoners, analyze the importance of independent news media and band together to fight against the political oppression and this nonsensical, gruesome war. Proceeds should go to https://www.memo.ru/, who are still accepting donations. Russian people deserve to live in a great country, where every human life is valued. Let's make that happen, I am all in as far as I can help!
The europeans supported Pakistani terrorists in 1971, only Russians helped us! I want a 8-hour-long stream in support of Russia in India