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Discussion (43 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
I checked the Paxel website and it says this:
> So far, 1,543,553 sessions have been uploaded and analyzed.
The count is for sessions, not coders. I assume the tool uploads a lot of sessions from each person who uses it.
That’s a large number, but it’s not a million different people. I am surprised that so many people think it’s a good idea to download a run a program which gathers up their coding sessions and submits information about them.
Also, not trying to take shots, but should the title be "I got into YC Startup School by hacking it" instead? Isn't that different than the main YC program?
All in all, you did them a solid by finding and responsibly disclosing. Nice job.
Sadly, it looks like they took that question off the application though.
Feels like a disaster waiting to happen.
;)
Obviously it’s not something everyone is going to be comfortable sharing, but YC is transparent about what is shared and how it’s used.
Edit:
I now see you have to explicitly run it in every directory you want shared - i.e., it doesn’t t scan your whole disk looking for stuff to upload. So there’s every opportunity to limit what it uploads to only what you want to share.
>curl -fsSL https://paxel.ycombinator.com/upload.sh | bash
Point in case.
Trustworthy people will ask you to give them the right amount of access, they won't ask you for infinite access and ask you to trust them that they won't use it. Would you trust a contractor that asks for root, and your master password when they could have requested a specific user or some specific files?
Edit:
I’ll add this point as people always seem to want to raise the spectre of YC or the AI platforms stealing people’s code or ideas via these sorts of tools.
The value of any code or ideas is immaterial compared to the value of identifying talented people who can then be offered opportunities such as attending Startup School, being funded by YC, getting jobs at YC-funded companies or YC itself.
It’s one of pg’s oldest dictums, that ideas alone are worthless, and only working products and the people that build them are worth anything. Nobody at YC thinks any differently about that these days.
Alright, my ears are wide open. Tell us more, how did YC use the private submission data from thousands of founders to score them? They fed some 3rd-Party AI all personal data to score who should get an interview? I can't be the only one here seeing a bad news story unfolding in real time...
https://youtu.be/B246K_G7mHU?si=UVJei9Jpk7ZvREnH&t=1483
https://youtu.be/B246K_G7mHU?si=ikHZD4MwxA5JtXLj&t=1716
I understand that YC and startups in general have less incentive to worry about security because they don't have much to lose. But I think the big winners will care about security from the start, because it's a bottleneck at the top, what would whatsapp be if they vibecoded security from day 1? It would never have been able to fix its reputation after the fact.
They then switch the topic and talk about token spend and how one can spend millions or billions of dollars in tokens, so it's a bit clearer what their incentives are.
I don't want to be negative and personal, but this is business, I listen to CEOs like Garry Tan and Satya Nadella, and I feel that I'm on an opposing team, my personal bet is to skip this cycle and wait for the next cycle of CEOs. I'm focusing a lot on security on this cycle, hopefully that will pay off.
> I should run a script, a very easy-to-use cURL one-liner that installed something on my computer and analyzed every line of code I’ve written with a coding agent, compile a report, and upload it to YC’s servers.
This is ridiculous. Any kind of application (job, startup school, whatever) should not do this. Honestly, wtf is YC thinking with this?
They want people who do what they say and don't challenge them?
> I should run a script, a very easy-to-use cURL one-liner that installed something on my computer and analyzed every line of code I’ve written with a coding agent, compile a report, and upload it to YC’s servers.
Yikes! I hope this is NOT the future of hiring.
That's nice framing. I believe the goal of American business culture (in general) is to do a much to users as possible, and do as little for users as they can get away with. Silicon Valley is the dumb partner who tends to say the quiet part loud.
From their perspective, it's code running on an untrusted third person/adversary's computer... If only last 40 years of computer history could be any guide as to what might go wrong here ..
but once you have some money (like >5m which is achievable), you can throw it around a bit and you just need a handful of success stories built by someone actually talented.
then you take credit for it and craft a narrative instead, which is easier just like collecting management fees instead of building something yourself.
what do you think it says if you don't use AI
you wouldn’t understand
Perhaps running the script outside a heavily sandboxed system should trigger an automatic rejection.
Some hands you have to fold, and I'm folding this one. Patiently waiting for the "let's give all our data to a single AI user" bubble to bust with some massive exploits.
so i’m not at all surprised at how it is used and by whom.