Revolut downtime forces a re-think of card v cash choices

 

In the 10 years since Revolut launched, it has become ubiquitous in Ireland. Approximately 3.4 million Revolut accounts are active in Ireland, meaning over 60% of Irish people have a Revolut card. Older people tend to have a Revolut account alongside an account at one of the traditional banks. However, younger people tend to rely completely on Revolut - not even carrying cash.

Revolut is in the news now because it suffered several hours of downtime on Tuesday 20th October 2026. Due to Revolut's dominance in Ireland, this was considered significant enough that RTE decided to devote 10 minutes of it's flagship 9-o-clock news show to covering this topic. Many young people don't carry any cash or a credit/debit card other than Revolut and so they were stuck - for example one young man filled his car with fuel and then was unable to pay.

It seems that the root cause was that Google cloud suffered a power outage in europe-west-2 region (aka London). Revolut was not the only company affected - Lloyds Bank and the Royal Mail were also high profile casualties.

People wonder why Revolut is so dominant in the Irish market. As I see it there are  number of factors:

• Revolut uses a mobile phone number in lieu of an account number when transferring money. This is very handy, since most people know their friends' phone numbers, but not their bank account numbers.
• Revolut has handy software to handle sharing bills
• Once Revolut reached a critical mass, revolut became a verb e.g. "I will revolut you the cost of those drinks"

Many people were critical of that Revolut didn't communicate on social media about the issue until it was resolved. For example, here is the brief Tweet that Revolut used to announce their systems are back online:

Here is a typical response from a user:

Overall, I think this incident will restore interest in old fashioned cash.

The growth of the "Looks Good to Me" attitude to AI reviews

 Recently, there has been a huge growth in the practice of using AI for writing code. This has led to some unscrupulous management teams to using AI efficiency as an excuse to get rid of many of the software engineers.

While AI is good at writing code, it is not so good at other steps in the software development life cycle such as code review (particularly if there is an ambiguous spec). As a result of this, the smaller remaining team of software engineer is left with a huge volume of AI written code to review. It takes time to properly review code and the temptation is to have a quick look at the code and then write "Looks Good To Me" (or even abbreviate it to LGTM)

This hilarious song video was written with Claude and looks at what happens when a fictitious company combines a management team keen to maximise use of AI and a team of engineers doing LGTM style code reviews.

Revolut top up getting more complex

One of the appealing features of Revolut used to be the ease of use. For example, to top up by a small amount (e.g. 10 euros) all you had to do was type in the amount to the Revolut app and click the "Top Up" button - Revolut remembered your bank details from previous top ups. Even if you wanted to top up by a large amount (e.g. 100 euros) you simply had to fill in your bank PIN on a single extra page.

Recent security "enhancements" mean you are brought through 8 extra screens to verify details for any top up no matter how small.

I see the need for security in any financial app, but this is ruining a previosly excellent user experience. 

A significnt update to wordle_cheat

A while ago, I wrote the wordle_cheat program. It works by calculating a list of possible words that match the clues that you have been given.

While I find the program really useful, the original version tended to over suggest i.e. it would suggest match words that I never heard of. The problem was with the dictionary I was using - it contained many obscure words that I ass a native speaker of English never heard of.

Luckily, I found a dictionary on the internet which matches the one Wordle uses to decide if a word is valid. Once I merged it with the wordle_cheat program I found it is now giving fewer, but much better suggestions.

Why not give it a whirl?

PowerPoint presentation coach

 I just discovered a very useful feature of PowerPoint called "performance coach". It allows you to practice presenting your slides and get feedback from an AI based coach.

To access this feature, you click on "slide show" in the menu ribbon at the top of the screen. Then you click on the "rehearse with coach" button. The presentation will launch in the usual screen show mode, but the microphone is recording what you say and it will give you feedback such as:

• Speaking too fast or slow
• Excessive use of fillers such s "ehh" or 'um'
• Speaking in a monotone voice

You can stop the coach by clicking on the microphone icon and selecting the pause option. It will then give you an overall feedback report on your presentation style.

Go on try it out!

Bug in Google maps' support for Eircodes

Ireland introduced a postcode system called Eircode relatively recently in 2015. Controversially it is not possible to map from an eircode to a GPS location without lookup on the Eircode Finder web site. The good news is that Google maps service supports eircodes and does the lookup for you behind the scenes. However, the bad news is that Google has a subtle but significant bug in the way that the Google maps works with eircodes.

The best way to understand the problem is to look at a practical example.

The example I will use is the address "12 Maunsells Park". If you search for this address Google will thankfully translate the address to "12 Maunsells Park, Galway, H91 AVW8, Ireland" where "H91 AVW8" is the eircode. If you ask for directions to this address it will correctly navigate you to the front door.

This is all good. However, the problem happens if you decide to instead search for the eircode  "H91 AVW8" (many delivery drivers prefer to search for the eircode because it is shorter to type and is unambiguous). At first glance this seems to work, because the dot appears at the same point in the map. However, if you try navigate to the point you will run into problems. 

The problem come from the fact that there is a small lane called "Maddens Lane" running behind the property. This small lane is lined with trees and a tall wall - there is no easy way to get from "Maddens Lane" to "12 Maunsells Park". However, since the dot on the map is slightly nearer to the back of the property, Google incorrectly decides that is where you want directions to.

If you route from one to the other Google says it is a 5 minute walk with three turns as you can see from the screenshot below.

This might seem like a minor nit-pick, but the reality of the situation is that people with a property between two roads like this will frequently dealing with delivery drivers ringing up to say they can't find where to deliver their package.

Understanding the problem is easy, implementing a solution is less obvious. One solution would be to update latitude/longitude in the eircode database to put the dot nearer the entrance to the property. However eircode support neem to be reluctant to do this.

Cheating at Strava

 

I recently read a New York Times article about cheating in Strava. It seems that there is a site dedicated to helping people falsify their data.

I would never knowingly falsify my Strava data, but occasionally do it by accident. 

What happens is that I go cycling a distance from home and I bring my bike to the start point in the back of the car. I then use my bike computer to track my cycle. Occasionally I forget to turn off my bike computer when I return to my car. The bike computer is still tracking my cycle while I drive home at 120km/h on the motorway.

When this happens I get an email from Strava entitled "suspected fraud". :-/

eBooks unavailable on new Amazon.ie web site

Until recently Irish users were forced to use the https:amazon.co.uk site. This was annoying because prices are quoted in pounds sterling rather than euros. Also shipping was slower and more expensive for Irish users compared to the service for UK users.

Irish users were understandably excited with the recent launch of https://amazon.ie/ 

I am personally excited and I have bought some books and been pleasantly surprised with the low price and speed of delivery. Unfortunately, it seems that the new https://amazon.ie/  site does have a major flaw - it doesn't support the sale of eBooks. I was mildly surprised that it didn't offer me the option of ordering a Kindle edition of the books I wanted. I assumed that the book in question didn't have a Kindle version, but then I checked on the https:amazon.co.uk site and a `kindle edition was available there.  

Wordle cheat becomes a proper Open Source project

 

Some time ago I wrote the wordle_cheat tool. Although I created it as an open source tool on GITHUB, I never thought anyone else would help with it's development.

I was pleasantly surprised when a user mpa-LHutchinson volunteered to fix the issue We need a better dictionary

It seem that he/she was taking part in hacktoberfest - I wish them the best of luck.

How to sort Irish surnames which begin with O'

Many Irish surnames (including mine) start with O'. This can be troublesome on websites that treat the apostrophe after the O as an unmatched quotation mark. However, when dealing with names in the Irish language (a.k.a.. Gaelic), it gets even worse.

My name in the Irish language in Briain Ó Donnabhain. The word Ó in the Irish language means "from" - in this context it means "descended from"According to this web site, it is derived from the words "donn," which means "brown," and "dubhan," a derivative of "dubh," which means "black." Apparently my distant ancestors had black and brown cows and hence the name stuck and got passed down the generations.

Where it gets confusing is for the female members of the family. In the Irish language, the Ó prefix is reserved for males only. My daughter's Irish name is N. ní Donnabhain (the prefix ní indicates she was born to a Donnabhain). If my wife chose to use her Irish name it would be F. uí Donnabhain (the prefix uí indicate she is married to a Donnabhain).

It gets really complicated when producing a phone directory (if such things still exist) and voting register. Using normal sorting rules a single family would be sorted all over the register rather than having them grouped together as would be normal for families with English names.

However, a number of years ago a politician named Éamon Ó Cuív who was a politician representing an Irish speaking area managed to solve the problem (in fact he sorted it out - pun intended). He decided that the prefix in Irish should be ignored for sorting purposes. Unfortunately the authorities did not agree with Éamon and he was fored to take lega action in the High court to get his proposal adopded.

Some people claimed that his real reason for takin the case is that his name Ó Cuív is now appearing with the C names ar the top of the ballot paper rather than in the middle/end with the O names