Never thought about it like that... We needed a name for the domain and chose this one because I thought we could have a Hippo (the animal) in our logo. I really like how mailchimp uses their logo to make their service a bit cooler. Thanks for mentioning.
2 phone/skype fizzbuzz interviews and a week trial. Alternatively, a project which is a simple tool or Open Source contribution. The later maybe be more appealing for students since they would like to have some github portfolio.
Sorry about that awful experience we caused there. We definitely had a period where we simply struggled to respond to everyone. We honestly get about 100 emails from this HN listing. When we were just a few people, it was hard to keep on top of. It's a poor excuse, and we're fixing it now (we genuinely get back to everyone now). We didn't handle this well for quite some time, though.
Use resumator or one of the other cheap apps for handling this. For most people a canned response is absolutely fine, it's the no-response that ticks people off.
We do make sure to respond (and provide feedback if asked) to everyone who applies. The issue that we're working on is our response usually comes 2-3 weeks after the initial submission.
I'm just trying to understand the racial words connotation in USA, just to not make faux pas in the future.