YouTube goes Gaming, Google recruits programmers, the invisible women of Ashley Madison, take the Free Reddit Check, and no one should want a virtual reality Facebook.

YouTube Gaming Launches to Rival Twitch

YouTube has launched YouTube Gaming, a spin-off site dedicated entirely to video games and the people who play them. While video games have always been a popular part of YouTube, YouTube Gaming ups the ante considerably, making games and gamers the sole focus rather than a mere sideshow.

YouTube Gaming is unarguably a direct response to the popularity of Twitch, a website solely dedicated to providing a platform for people to live-stream themselves playing games. The Amazon-owned site has proved beyond any doubt that gaming is a spectator sport, and YouTube clearly wants a piece of the action.

The biggest element of YouTube Gaming are the live streams, which show people playing through current-gen games. Viewers can interact in a chatroom, as well as pause or even rewind the action. YouTube Gaming also features all of the standard gaming content already present on YouTube itself, from rage quits to game reviews, from machinima to PewDiePie.

YouTube Gaming is available on the Web, on Android, and on iOS. It's highly unlikely to appeal to anyone not already into games (in a big way), but adds a serious competitor to rival Twitch in the live-streaming stakes. Which should mean both up their game as time goes on, with more features for both streamers and viewers alike.

Google Recruits From Simple Searches

It's the dream of many to land a job at Google. Or Alphabet, as it's to be known from now on. Google is a huge company offering job security, benefits, bonuses, and a working environment most of us can only dream about. The bad news is you're not likely to make the cut, but the good news is there's a secret shortcut to at least landing an interview.

According to The Hustle, Max Rosett, a new Google employee, Google recruits programmers who happen to search for specific terms on Google Search. In Rosett's case, he Googled, “python lambda function list comprehension,” which opened an invitation for him to take part in a challenge using something called foo.bar.

The challenge is a programming problem that can be solved using Python or Java. Once the first is completed, another pops up, and then another, until Google finally requests some contact information. Rosett was eventually recruited by Google based on his résumé, an interview, and a day spent at Google HQ. But foo.bar got him on the first rung of the ladder.

Hardly Any Women Used Ashley Madison

It turns out that the number of women actively using Ashley Madison may have been even smaller than the conservative estimates. According to Annalee Newitz at Gizmodo, while 5.5 million of the 37 million profiles were marked as belonging to females, that number could be a far cry from the truth.

Firstly, a sizable percentage of those profiles are likely to be fake, created by men, bots, or even someone working for Ashley Madison. Secondly, the number of females who checked their messages or used the chat system is tiny compared to the men who have done either/both. So much so that the number of active female users would be rounded down to zero when judged against the number of profiles.

There are some possible explanations for these data discrepancies, but assuming the numbers aren't lying, millions of men were using Ashley Madison to find women willing to cheat on their partners from a pool of just tens of thousands. So maybe the Ashley Madison hack and subsequent data dump is a blessing in disguise for the men wasting their time and money.

Free Reddit Check Finds Bigoted Friends

While Reddit is one of the cornerstones of the Internet, there is a small minority of users who are there to share their bigotry with other like-minded individuals. Whether that bigotry is racism, sexism, homophobia, or even fat-shaming. Are you friends with some of these people, even unwittingly?

Free Reddit Check [Broken URL Removed] will let you know. This free unofficial Web tool, as discovered by Motherboard, will check up on what subreddits your friends frequent and the kind of things they're saying in these subreddits. It won't offer a perfect assessment of someone's level of bigotry, but it's certainly better than nothing.

Virtual Reality Facebook Is a Nightmare

And finally, with Facebook owning Oculus, the manufacturer of the surprisingly popular Oculus Rift, there's a high probability of there being a virtual reality version of Facebook in the works. But what would it look and sound like? Jimmy Kimmel thinks he has the answer.

Kimmel imagines a virtual reality version of Facebook will be just like the regular ol' Facebook, but with flashier visuals. So, you'll still encounter those annoying status updates, including the friend showing endless photos of their baby, the obsessed poker, and the racist uncle you try to ignore. Joy! [H/T CNET]

Your Views on Today’s Tech News

Will you be visiting YouTube Gaming on a regular basis? Have you ever triggered the Google's secret recruitment tool? Are you surprised at the gender gap on Ashley Madison? Are you friends with bigots on Reddit? Would you use a virtual reality version of Facebook?

Let us know your thoughts on the Tech News of the day by posting to the comments section below. Because a healthy discussion is always welcome.