I guess one man's "desperation" is another's marketing/self-promotion.
Maybe nothing comes of this directly but many more people are already talking about them then say 24 hours ago. In that it's already a huge success for a promotion that has cost them all of 15 min.
I disagree. They could have gone and shot a bunch of dogs and posted pictures on the internet. By your measurement 'many more people are already talking about them...'. Is this example extreme? Sure, but the point is that the measurement is not if people are talking about them, but if they get closer to their goals.
How can they take advantage of this to help them? The first step is do a 72 hour hackathon on any problem and produce results. Then come back, and say, "Show HN: We did the PG challenge anyway!"
We actually are doing that. We're in the process of looking at PG's list of ambitious startups/Y Combinators list of ideas for startups. Even if they don't get back to us over the next few days we're going to mull these over then execute.
Maybe nothing comes of this directly but many more people are already talking about them then say 24 hours ago. In that it's already a huge success for a promotion that has cost them all of 15 min.