Il futuro dei collisionatori passa da FCC (anche in versione ridotta) A inizio dicembre dell’anno appena concluso avevo parlato di due sviluppi importanti per il futuro di FCC. Tra le altre cose, aspettavamo la redazione delle raccomandazioni sulla strategia europea …

A dicembre avevo parlato di due sviluppi per il futuro di FCC: tra le altre cose, aspettavamo la redazione delle raccomandazioni sulla strategia europea per la fisica delle particelle, che lo ESG doveva redigere. Le raccomandazioni sono puntualmente arrivate (...) www.borborigmi.org/2026/01/12/i...

The European Strategy for Particle Physics reaches an important milestone

At its 225th session, the #CERN Council received the recommendations for the update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics.

Read more: home.cern/news/press-r...

Ok, there was a trap! Damn @was.tl that was a neat puzzle... ;-)
So, no real need to actually solve the region present arrangements, but what if I did anyway? ;-)

I just completed all 12 days of Advent of Code 2025! #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com

... to explore the full phase space in case it does not exist. My quick and dirty solution was to cut seaches that takes too long, and it worked! ;-) I'll work on possible optimisation and pruning options another time...

I've completed "Christmas Tree Farm" - Day 12 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/12
github.com/marcodelmast... Jigsaw/Tetris-like puzzle to solve. I implemented a backtracking solution that converge rather fast if a solution exists, but takes a lot of time ...

Inputs, output, and intermediate nodes to be traced in part 2 are circled in red (and it is easy to see that the portion of the graph relevant to part 1, starting from "you," is considerably smaller than the portion for part 2)

The color of the nodes shifts toward red proportionally to the number of incoming connections (and it is clearly visible that there are bottlenecks...).

And now the compulsory graph visualisation;-)

I've completed "Reactor" - Day 11 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/11 github.com/marcodelmast... Using networkx to simplify all graph basic operations. I ended up implemented a path counting approach based on DP that speed up Part 1, and is compusory to approach Part 2!

Definitely harder than yesterday, but in a different way (required more mathematical thinking and knowledge of specialized tools).

Most of the complexity was in properly encoding the constraints (integer non-negative solutions, minimal sum). Part 2 result was initially wrong by 1 becouse of a @$%^& rounding error when casting result to int!

... while it works for the example, even with pruning the solution space is still too large for the full input. Thinking more carefully I tried a mathematical approach (Part 2 is effectively a linear system with constraints) using scipy.optimize.milp to solve (MILP=Mixed-Integer Linear Programming)

I just completed "Factory" - Day 10 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/10 github.com/marcodelmast... BFS and bitwise XOR operation for Part 1. I initially thought I could adapt my BFS solution for Part 2, but ...

I've completed "Movie Theater" - Day 9 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/9 github.com/marcodelmast... Hardest day so far. Part 1 was trivial, Part 2 required to handle various edge cases and a peculiar input! Used a combination of ray casting and edge crossing detection.

It's a wrap! No more #LHC collisions this year - it's time for the "year end technical stop"

op-webtools.web.cern.ch/vistar/

How “not on BS”?! I’m here! ;)

And not the compulsory animation... ;-)

AdventOfCode2025/Day08.ipynb at main · marcodelmastro/AdventOfCode2025 Advent Of Code 2025. Contribute to marcodelmastro/AdventOfCode2025 development by creating an account on GitHub.

I've completed "Playground" - Day 8 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/8 github.com/marcodelmast... Things re-learned the hard way today: objects in dictionary and list are references; result of set operations are new set; `list.remove()` is pretty convenient ;-)

I've completed "Laboratories" - Day 7 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/7 Used `set()` for part 1 to deal with overlapping beams, moved to `defaultdict(int)` in part 2 to count beams in same position (it's lanternfish day!).
github.com/marcodelmast...

I've completed "Trash Compactor" - Day 6 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/6 github.com/marcodelmast... Part 2 was fun, using string to reconstitue values after rotation, catching str->int conversion to deal with empty lines.

AdventOfCode2025/Day05.ipynb at main · marcodelmastro/AdventOfCode2025 Advent Of Code 2025. Contribute to marcodelmastro/AdventOfCode2025 development by creating an account on GitHub.

I just completed "Cafeteria" - Day 5 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/5
Very similar to AOC 2016 Day 20, I almost entirely recycled that code to prune and merge the overlapping intervals. github.com/marcodelmast...

I've completed "Printing Department" - Day 4 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/4 github.com/marcodelmast... First map of 2025 (and first visualisation)! Solved with `numpy` array operations...

A couple of developments toward the future of FCC Over the past few months, despite my sporadic presence on these pages, I’ve been reporting in bits and pieces on the work done for the update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics. I had, f…

(...) The ESG is working on them right now, during a meeting at Monte Verità, in Ascona, Switzerland. The recommendations will be delivered to the CERN Council which will then have to take concrete decisions for the coming years (...) we still have time, and we should try to be bold and visionary.

I've completed "Lobby" - Day 3 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/3 github.com/marcodelmast...

I've completed "Gift Shop" - Day 2 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/2 github.com/marcodelmast...

I've completed "Secret Entrance" - Day 1 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/1 github.com/marcodelmast...

La futura strategia per la fisica delle particelle in Europa, a Parigi Sono seduto su un treno che va da Ginevra a Parigi, diretto a un simposio dove cercheremo di tirare le fila sulla posizione della comunità scientifica francese rispetto al prossimo aggiornamento de…

Sono seduto su un treno che va da Ginevra a Parigi, diretto a un simposio dove cercheremo di tirare le fila sulla posizione della comunità scientifica francese rispetto al prossimo aggiornamento della Strategia Europea per la Fisica delle Particelle (...)

Perciò era nobilmente pigro Un paio di lettori sono riusciti a decifrare la breve frase che avevo proposto alla vostra attenzione crittografica qualche giorno fa: Pdiho lrxpt ci rwdmxi, br ihsge dv hfabsexj wveq mhemqqir kts …

Perciò era nobilmente pigro

Un paio di lettori sono riusciti a decifrare la breve frase che avevo proposto alla vostra attenzione crittografica qualche giorno fa (...)

www.borborigmi.org/2025/01/19/p...

#borborigmi #primolevi #crittografia

Circa 56 Mentre stanno arrivando gli auguri di inizio 2025 per il biglietto di ATLAS di quest’anno, mi è venuta voglia di misurare quante persone avessero negli anni partecipato a questo appuntamento …

Mentre stanno arrivando gli auguri di inizio 2025 per il biglietto di ATLAS di quest'anno, mi è venuta voglia di misurare quante persone avessero negli anni partecipato a questo appuntamento annuale che esiste dal 2010. (...) www.borborigmi.org/2025/01/06/c...