Hi everyone,
Over the last few months, we have received several reports of unexpected TimeoutExceptions in algorithms that were running to completion most of the time, but then timing out every once in a while. We've been investigating the problem, and believe we've identified and fixed the problem. The first change we made back in July was to separate Pipeline computations from before_trading_start, and increase the amount of time that it has to run. Yesterday, we shipped a fix to an issue where TimeoutExceptions were being raised before the time limit had actually been reached. Based on what we've seen so far, the fix seems to be working.
Most notably, the incorrect TimeoutExceptions caused several algorithms to be disqualified from the contest. We're expecting this issue to be fixed. If you had an entry that you think was disqualified due to an incorrect timeout, please let us know, and we can re-qualify it in the contest. Of course, there are still correct timeout exceptions that can occur, but we're expecting them to crop up much less frequently than the incorrect ones we were seeing before.
I want to apologize for the frustration experience for those who were affected by the bug, and thank everyone who raised the issue. As usual, let us know if you encounter any further issues.
