Blog Archives for 2025
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Air India Flight 171
The accident aircraft, VT-ANB, in 2024 (Photo: RyanZ225 PC / CC-BY-SA 4.0)It seems that whatever happened to Air India Flight 171 to make it crash right after takeoff is still a mystery.
An Air India Boeing 787-8, registration VT-ANB performing flight AI-171 from Ahmedabad (India) to London Gatwick,EN (UK) with 230 passengers and 12 crew, was departing Ahmedabad's runway 23 at 13:38L (08:08Z), when the crew declared Mayday "No Thrust, not taking lift" and the aircraft crashed into the "BJ Medical College" in Meghaninagar surbub about 0.9nm past the runway end, first impact at position N23.056 E72.612 with wreckage spread over 200 meters. Rescue services are at the scene. There have been fatalities and injuries on the ground, local police believed there was no survivor on board of the aircraft, however, later confirmed one survivor. The airline confirmed 241 people on board died in the crash, there was only one survivor. There are 39 fatalities on the ground confirmed in addition to many injuries on the ground. Ground witnesses reported the aircraft impacted hostel buildings within a states run college for doctors, one student was able to jump out of the hotel and survived with injuries. About 50-60 students have been injured.
According to ADS-B the aircraft had entered runway 23 from the apron, which without backtracking would leave a takeoff distance available of 1900 meters/6300 feet. Four minutes later - without further position data being received, so unclear from the ADS-B whether the aircraft backtracked or not, on Jun 15th 2025 it was clarified that the aircraft had backtracked and used the full length of the runway - the aircraft took off. In the last ADS-B position the aircraft had climbed to about 625 feet MSL according to Standard Pressure (compensated for ambient pressure that would be about about 264 feet MSL or 75 feet AGL) at 174 knots over ground.
On Jun 14th 2025 the survivor reported, that moments after becoming airborne the lights in the aircraft began to flicker and the aircraft appeared to be "stuck in the air". The lights began flickering green and white, then the aircraft slammed into a building. He saw an opening in front of him, unbelted himself and used his feet to push through the opening. Doctors treating the survivor stated, that he was disorientated and suffered multiple injuries all over his body, he is out of danger however.
On Jun 17th 2025 an official, a former Air India Captain trained by the Captain of the accident flight, stated, that the CVR has been successfully read out, the voices on the CVR are very clear. It is becoming gradually clear from the newly emerging evidence that there was probably zero negligence in the cockpit, the crew did not give up until the very last moment. The probability of a technical cause is high. A preliminary report by India's AAIB can be expected in a few days.
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PoE 2 is Unplayable Right Now in Europe
Well, it turns out that fix for the Path of Exile 2 server problems doesn’t work. I am constantly getting disconnected again and again now. It must have been pure luck that the bug didn’t get triggered when I was testing the fix initially.
Progress constantly being wiped in an always-online game like this is absolutely unacceptable and the fact that the developers are publicly acknowledging all kinds of other problems with their game, some of them quite minor, but have said nothing whatsoever publicly about this in days is very disappointing. The thread on the forums about the problem has almost 700 posts and more than 15.000 views by now, but not a single dev or community person has chimed in. It’s upsetting me, because I really like that game, but with it being basically unplayable, I am moving on now. It’s affecting my mood and I don’t need that from a video game. I think it’s time to go back to Elden Ring.
I will check on PoE 2 in a few months, probably. Maybe the EU servers are in an acceptable state by then.
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PoE 2 Server Disconnects
Path of Exile 2, which is still in Early Access, has just released their first content expansion after its launch in December of last year. The most recent update to the game introduced some pretty significant server issues, though. These seem to mostly affect the European servers and are causing frequent disconnects from the server that cause you to lose all progress you have made in that play session. For an online-only game this is pretty significant and makes it basically unplayable for any reasonable person.
On the game’s forums, a workaround has been suggested that, in my tests, seems to have resolved the issue for me. Go to the in-game settings and use the button to open the folder that stores loot filters. In that folder, there is a file called
poe2_production_config.ini. Open it with a text editor and search for the following line:networking_type=autoReplace this with:
networking_type=predictiveThe latency to the server and general network performance is still a lot worse since before the latest patch, but at least I’m not getting disconnected and lose progress anymore.
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A Note on PoE 2 Crashes
Speaking of PoE 2, if you have issues with it crashing and hard locking your PC (especially on the latest Windows 11 version, 24H2) you might want to tweak the affinity of the PoE process. To do this, go to the "Details" tab of the Task Manager (which you can call up by pressing
Ctrl+Alt+Delete) and search for the game’s process — in my case that isPathOfExileSteam.exe. Right click on it and choose "Set affinity", then remove a processor core or two so that the process doesn’t use all of your CPU’s cores.
That way, only the game will lock up instead of the whole machine with you needing to reboot. This only happens when loading maps, so you won’t lose any game progress and you can simply restart the game again (not forgetting to tweak the affinity every time). I also set my renderer to Vulkan, but I don’t know if that is needed to make this work.
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A Note on Finishing PoE 2
After almost exactly 4 days playtime in the game, and 208 deaths, I have just finished the Early Access portion of Path of Exile 2. That is, I finished acts one to three of the game, killed every boss and fully explored all maps — with a Solo Self Fund character. You can redo those acts at a higher difficulty and then enter the endgame mode, but I am not sure I want to do that right now. I’d rather start a new character in a new class and replay the content I have already explored.
In any case: What a great game! I’ve been loving every minute of this so far.
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