xiaomei

The discuss link in the story below is inactive. Is this a feature?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3585561

Many of you may be familiar with Mailinator and clones. They generate temporary anonymous email addresses and prove useful when signing up for services without giving up your personal email. However there are cases when I want to subscribe to a service and receive notifications. I may decide to unsubscribe later. Is there a need for a service that generates permanent anonymous email addresses?

I could generate a long term anonymous email address and have it forward email to my personal email account. Later when I want to stop receiving email from this account instead of looking for unsubscribe button I would delete the anonymous email address. This would solve the problem of unsubscribing from email subscriptions.

I was surprised to learn that Facebook eagerly asks for access to your profile while applying for a job [1]. Many organizations have been asking for applicants' Facebook credentials to check for indications of misbehavior. Facebook has publicly denounced this and threatened to sue employers who follow this policy.

It's odd that despite all this controversy Facebook asks for access to your profile before applying. Now, they do make it clear that it is optional to grant access and that you may send them a resume but I think that this places applicants at a disadvantage. One could argue that this is an example of discrimination by privacy. I imagine applications with and without profiles going to different bins before they are reviewed.

So, how is requiring API access to your profile different from asking for your password? Could an employer build a Facebook app for job applicants to authorize? The app would scan the applicant's profile for bad behavior. This would avoid the issue of asking for credentials but may conflict with Facebook's data usage policy. One could imagine, however, a "job application" app that algorithmically looks through profiles without revealing personal information to the employer and raises alarms if it finds anything suspicious. It seems people are already familiar with Google's Gmail ad bot reading their email. So this is not too far out there.

[1] http://www.facebook.com/careers/apply?job_id=a2KA0000000LjXTMA0

Applications for YC S12 are due in five weeks. I suspect there are many great people here wanting to start a venture. However many of us may lack an idea or prototype to apply with. Others may be in need of a founding partner. I know that it is risky to apply with someone you barely know but marriages do follow from speed dating, after all. The best example of founder speed dating I can think of is Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi deciding to apply to YC after meeting twice to start Dropbox [1]. So, who is in need of a product idea or a cofounder before applying to YC?

Please tell what you can offer to your founder match.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2011/10/18/dropbox-the-inside-story-of-techs-hottest-startup/