A quick update on some of the infrastructure behind the map: One day of being on the front page of HN has used up half of the Mapbox free quota of map loads. To sustain this level of traffic would cost me something like $2000/month just for Mapbox. Since this is a non-profit project that I do in my spare time, something is going to have to give.
Since you don't actually need very detailed maps -- the hexagons are large, zooming in is pointless -- and your dynamic data is a simple overlay, I think you should be able to use static tiles generated just once. And you should be able to generate the tiles from free OpenStreetMap data, the country outlines & major cities there are plenty good enough for this use, even globally.
Yes, I know it's not as simple to throw together as just using Mapbox.
