Researchers from NYU and the University of Virginia are looking for computer programmers to participate in a study of creativity and innovation. The study involves a creativity contest that will take about 5-10 minutes. The winner will receive a $500 prize. The researchers are looking for professional and serious amateur computer programmers to participate. You can access the study here.

The Raspberry Pi is a $25 credit-card sized computer that has succeeded in making GNU/Linux not just newsworthy, but downright desirable. The initial batch of boards sold out in minutes, and eager customers crashed the server where it was being sold. The original vision of the Raspberry Pi was to promote amateur programming and to re-invigorate the teaching of computing in the UK (and elsewhere) by providing a very low-cost and easily hackable system. Naturally, though, its open source code allows it to be applied in many different situations. Here, for example, is a plan to create a secure chat system for activists that can be used in countries where communications are routinely under surveillance, using a program called Cryptocat:

Because of their low-cost and small size they can then be shipped to activists and NGO's in areas where free-speech is difficult.

"This is especially useful for activist organizations, human rights organizations, any group composed of a few dozen people who need to have an internal secure communication service," said Mr Kobeissi.

Small, portable Raspberry Pi computers set up to run Cryptocat, he believes, may be a quick way to build such a service.

An interesting consequence of Moore's Law and the ready availability of free software is that powerful computers can now be produced for just tens of dollars, and in an extremely small package. The low cost means that organizations supporting activists can send in many such systems to countries with human rights problems, and replace them if they are discovered and confiscated or destroyed. The size makes it much easier to import them discreetly, as well as to conceal them in countries that try to keep computing under tight control.

And it's not just the Raspberry Pi that will be making this possible. Its high-profile success is likely to mean that in due course other systems will be produced that are cheaper and smaller. That will ensure they are even more popular with the educational market and hackers -- and even more problematic for oppressive regimes.

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Plenty of video games are just a waste of time, but some games aim to be more than just ways to entertain kids and people with too much free time. A few games try to solve real world problems, and there are a handful of games that claim to improve mental agility. Here are some quick links on games and human cognition.

• Chess used to be the game that could measure a person's cognitive capabilities, but StarCraft2 might be the new game that provides metrics for humans' abilities to plot and strategize. Meanwhile, the computers are wondering why we're wasting so much time on variations of Tic-Tac-Toe and Rock-Paper-Scissors. [url]
• Imagine a game that taught you how to program better video games, would that be a fun game? If only the result was actually a virtuous cycle for improving video games and programmers... [url]
• Previous studies that suggested video games can help improve human cognitive function may be seriously flawed. Experimental design is really critical for generating psychology conclusions that aren't biased -- and surprise, surprise: there are a lot of widely-cited studies that are poorly designed. [url]
• To find some cool online games, check out what StumbleUpon has found to play. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Ben Adida has a great post discussing the misplaced faith people often have in the machines in their lives, and the way that faith often spills over to e-voting. He mentions a scene in the 2006 HBO documentary on e-voting where an election official breaks down in tears when someone shows her how her voting machines could be hacked. For computer programmers, who are intimately familiar with what goes on under the hood, the idea that we should automatically trust anything a machine tells us is a little bit ridiculous. We're aware that computers are extremely complex devices that can go wrong in any number of ways, that they're designed by fallible human beings, and that it requires a lot of very careful engineering to make sure they're secure and reliable. We recognize, in particular, that the more complex a system is, the more likely it is to have problems, and so the more skeptical we should be of its results. It's not a coincidence that $5 pocket calculators tend to work flawlessly, while complex systems like Excel and the Pentium chip sometimes make basic arithmetic errors: the greater complexity increases the number of ways things can go wrong.

But a lot of non-technical folks seem to view things the other way around. Last week, for example, I noted a a Chicago law professor who thinks that "the future is surely with the touch-screen or some other form of online voting." The problem with this statement is that if our goal is security and reliability, which it should be, the added complexity of computers and touchscreens is a big disadvantage. But this isn't obvious if you've never looked under the hood to appreciate all the things that could go wrong. Computers are not magical boxes that always produce the correct answer, but unfortunately, a lot of people seem to think that they are.