A great lesson in the risks of assuming that any group of people can/will recognize the inherent problems with their own status quo. I liked the storytelling style of the post as well.

This one is even more substantive, perhaps: http://scientificamerican.com/article/this-forest-listens-an...

Should they succeed, let us hope that the mobile version of the webmail client will function better than the mobile version of your static site. Pretty unusable in MobileSafari.

Hey topherwhite I'm the UI/UX designer of Mailpile- totally aware of the poor rendering on mobile at present. Working on fixing that- was swamped with other aspects of the campaign launch. Thanks for your feedback :)

This a really cool idea, and great for getting students started without the stress of making code public. Kudos to Github. Does GitHub offer any similar benefits to non-profits or other types of organizations?

We offer free Bronze Organization plans to nonprofits with proof of status.

https://github.com/nonprofit

Is there any opportunity for non-US non-profit associations? That "501(c)(3) status" seems blocking.

Yes, please send a request via http://github.com/nonprofit

You'll need proof of non-profit status from your jurisdiction.

The site itself is already quite cool, though certainly could use a facelift... http://pucatrade.com/

I first started following Rick Smolan's books about 6 years ago (they only produce one every few years or so), and these photo books remain some of the only non e-books I would consider buying anymore... Always beautiful, and often thought-provoking. As a software engineer, this last one on Big Data hits pretty close to home, and I wasn't sure I'd have the same reaction, but I was quite impressed. If you're not convinced, there's a free preview of the book here (mid-way down the page)...

http://humanfaceofbigdata.com/

The info graphics alone are way too cool. Just my 2-cents...