At least parts of it will be publicly available. Our goal is to make the entire code/data publicly available. We might have to provide URLs and bounding boxes/other meta data for each image. But we're trying to figure out how to do this properly.
Many luminaries including Peter Thiel have been saying this but I see a little bit of a contradiction while comparing their statements to their backgrounds. Peter Thiel, for example, went to Stanford undergrad and law school. Chris Dixon has an MA from Columbia. PG has a PhD from Harvard etc...I'm also wondering if the reverse is happening in the startup world where investors see you unfavorably if you're not a 19 year old college dropout but instead have an advanced degree. In addition, like the previous poster pointed out, credentialism exists everywhere. People want to trust one source for vetting multiple candidates. This happens with YC for example. YC startups are more likely to raise money because investors trust the partners' judgement in vetting the founders.
I roomed with 3 other hacker schoolers in a 4 bedroom apartment about 20 minutes away from hacker school (by train), and rent was $600 a month. I found the place through craigslist. Once you get accepted you can coordinate with other hacker schoolers and people from previous batches to help you find affordable places to live. Also, there were people from India, South Africa, Netherlands, Sweden and France during my batch. Most of them found housing in a similar way (through craigslist/airbnb or previous hacker school alumni)
I took a break from my startup and PhD in EE at Stanford as well as 6 years of work at Apple to do hacker school. It has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and I would do it again if I could. There were people with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences during my batch--from programmers who learned how to code before they could speak :) to a baker who had only started programming a month before the beginning of the batch. The only requirement is that you enjoy it so I encourage anyone who wants to grow as a programmer to apply.