Hashtag Trending Jan. 31 – Sega leaves arcades; T-Mobile to fire unvaccianted employees; crypto dev a former fraudster

Sega exits the arcade business, T-Mobile to fire unvaccinated employees by April, and a key member of a popular crypto protocol was revealed to be a former fraudster.

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Monday, January 31, and I’m your host, Tom Li.

Many of us have a part of our childhood roots in arcades, so it’s sad to hear that Sega, one of Japan’s largest gaming companies, has officially exited the arcade business after more than 50 years. According to Eurogamer, Sega has planned the move since 2020 when it sold 85 per cent of its arcade business shares. It has now offloaded the rest. Sega’s departure from the industry is no surprise. With gaming now proliferating on phones, PCs, and a plethora of consoles, they’ve long superseded arcade machines in popularity. The flashing lights in arcade halls are now a rare sight to behold and emblematic of a bygone era.

T-Mobile will fire unvaccinated employees by April 2, according to Bloomberg, which has obtained a memo sent to T-Mobile employees. The memo allegedly contained several deadlines. First, employees who have not yet had their first vaccine dose by Feb. 21 will be placed on unpaid leave, and finally fired if they do not become fully vaccinated by April 2. The new policy applies to anyone who needs “regular or occasional” access to T-Mobile’s offices, reported the article. T-Mobile has confirmed the vaccination deadline since the report was published. The company also said that it will apply limited exemptions for certain roles and legally mandated accommodations.

A key developer of a multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency protocol was revealed to have had a history of fraud, according to a Vice article. The co-founder of Wonderland DeFi protocol, which powers the TIME token, was revealed to be Michael Patryn. Patryn has had a turbulent history with money-related troubles. He was the co-founder of QuadrigaCX, a Canadian crypto exchange that crumpled after Patryn’s partner, Gerald Cotten, died in India with the only private key to the exchange, locking up users’ money. After Cotten’s untimely death, the platform couldn’t meet all of its users’ withdrawal requests and crashed. Towards the end of its life, it was revealed that QuadrigaCX was being used as a Ponzi scheme. Apart from the exchange fiasco, Patryn himself has been convicted of computer fraud and credit fraud. Daniele Sestagalli, the founder of Wonderland, has asked Patryn to step down following the revelation.

And now for something a little different. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has allegedly modified a line in the Linux Kernel, supposedly revealing himself to be the legendary Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym for the inventor of bitcoin, whose real identity has yet to be revealed. There have been many speculations as to who Nakamoto could be and, while many have claimed to be behind the name, none were concrete. Could Torvald’s hidden note have big implications or is it just a sense of humour? We’ll let you be the judge.

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, if you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Tom Li.