I think it is only being discovered now because nobody really looked before, at least not in the sense of actual research and journalism as opposed to googling some shit and doing a blog post.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are other programmers named Satoshi Nakamoto. McBay is a fairly uncommon name and I'm not even the only programmer named George McBay and the other one (who as far as I know isn't directly related in any way) is from Japan! Small world!
But that aside it isn't just the tech/math background, it is the total picture as laid out in the article. Unless the article is totally fabricated, which I have no reason to believe it is, the case it makes is pretty compelling.
Nobody looked before, really? Speculation about "who is Satoshi Nakamoto" has been around for years now, except previous Satoshi-s weren't called that and were suspected based on their deeds in field of cryptography. Wikipedia [1] mentions 6 of them and I've heard of more.
And "journalism" (professional one) usually makes me suspect making up random stuff much more than anything else. They are paid to make scandalous articles, you know.
To be fair, I don't personally claim it is fake. I say it is weird and makes me easily accept someone claiming it is fake.
I don't really have an opinion on Satoshi, but I don't think it's all that hard to cherrypick details from someone's life to give whatever overall impression you want.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are other programmers named Satoshi Nakamoto. McBay is a fairly uncommon name and I'm not even the only programmer named George McBay and the other one (who as far as I know isn't directly related in any way) is from Japan! Small world!
But that aside it isn't just the tech/math background, it is the total picture as laid out in the article. Unless the article is totally fabricated, which I have no reason to believe it is, the case it makes is pretty compelling.