[XMR] Monero - A secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency

[phishead]

Can Monero do something like this?

https://dashtalk.org/threads/new-video-translations.6159/

Many people still cannot be reached by our current materials because of language barriers.

it could. I'm guessing that kind of material cost thousands of dollars to make. But first step to making such a thing would be a script.

Well, when the time comes... Two of my buddies could possibly go about translating stuff.  One of them speaks Mandarin and the other Japanese.  I still have yet to have seen them for some time now... but I'm sure if I were to meet up with them for a couple of beers and talk to them a bit, they would be interested.  Though, they are currently living in the countries where those languages apply.

I think the time has come already. We need marketing to grow our user base. More users can help fund more donations towards development.

Ok, well I'll be sure to try and contact them... Is there a video that is currently out about monero that would need to be translated though?  I'm sure they would need help in how to do voice overs too.

[smoothie]

So is Monero the Platinum to Bitcoin's gold?  

Duh.  Welcome to one year ago!

Way to arrive at the party fashionably late.    

Yes Icey-pooh I know you said this long ago. I just wanted to say it again.

 

Edit: I was around in June 2014. So i'm not as late as you might think.

 

[americanpegasus]

Hey AP, saw you posted on the thread and am curious if he ever did respond to you... is there anything we can do to get him on board? Funding? Anything?

 
 
No response, but that's ok.  Things that are supposed to happen tend to happen.

[Jungian]

So is Monero the Platinum to Bitcoin's gold?  

  
I have posted this picture before, but it bears repeating that Bitcoin fulfilled all the requirements of being the first digital collectible (which was monumental - not to take anything away from it), but it was not the next true evolution of money.  That may be a bold statement, but it's true.  Cryptonote, and Monero by extension, is the next big evolution of money - and as a result will (imho) overtake bitcoin by value in time.

Why will not BTC just incorporate the best features of XMR into its ecosystem? It's reasonable to assume that the privacy issues will be solved once they become more critical.
Both cryptonote and zerocash can be side chains. And on top of that we have confidential transactions and various other privacy focused solutions.

Truthcoin inventor Paul Sztorc

http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/basics/

Clearly, Bitcoin’s market-cap / network-effect dominates. Also-obvious: there is absolutely no reason to switch from Bitcoin to any other ‘money-only’ system (Litecoin, Dogecoin, Feathercoin). Only slightly-less-obvious: there is no reason to switch to any ‘new-features’ system, either! Thanks to the permissionless nature of software development, new features which are good enough will eventually be incorporated into the biggest-network (Bitcoin). By “good enough” I mean “worth doing”, I measure “worth doing” by the response of the community…this logic is so perfectly true, it approaches tautology!

Privacy is not a huge issue at the moment (at least not as big as most XMR supporters(I'm one of them) tend to make it). We don't see the dark market vendors being targeted via block-chain analysis, so that's obviously not the weakest link for that kind of user, and I think NSA level surveillance will be able to track XMR-users aswell using the same methods.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge XMR-supporter and I love what the team is doing. I even own a considerable amount (almost 8 full moneroes ) of them, but I see the chances of XMR overtaking BTC as very slim. The altcoins are a casino and a lab and it's fun to be there and join the teams, but so far only BTC is money and I think it will stay that way, because I don't see any problem that BTC can't overcome really.

[americanpegasus]

Privacy is not a huge issue at the moment (at least not as big as most XMR supporters(I'm one of them) tend to make it). We don't see the dark market vendors being targeted via block-chain analysis, so that's obviously not the weakest link for that kind of user, and I think NSA level surveillance will be able to track XMR-users aswell using the same methods.

 
  
I made the mistake of thinking it was about privacy at first as well.  It bears repeating that bitcoin is not true digital cash.  It is a digital collectible because each bitcoin has a unique and traceable history.  One bitcoin does not actually equal one bitcoin, a fact that will only become more prevalent over time.  We saw the first tremor of this when the community 'banded together' to not accept coins stolen from an exchange.  It sounded good in principle, but it has deep implications for bitcoin's ability to serve as "the world wide ledger".  Even if Russia accepts bitcoin one day, it does no good if a politician can say, "Bitcoins mined in America are illegal and not to be trusted or used."  Also, when you have a currency where if a larger holder (like Satoshi Nakamoto) decided to spend any of his coins it would cause a spectacular market crash, that is not a fungible or viable world currency.  (imagine if Warren Buffet buying a coffee with some of his money were capable of causing the dollar to crash?)  
  
People like to defend bitcoin because it has a larger network, but if all other things were equal, and both bitcoins and moneros were each worth $100 each with one million users each, which would you choose as your preferred network?  The answer is obvious.  With optional view-keys, better cryptography, a better emissions curve (with a perpetual emission to replace lost and destroyed coins), and no hard coded block size, Monero is the superior choice in every respect (on top of any fundamental privacy or fungibility advances).  
  
Even if we were to make Monero a side-chain (something that doesn't even exist yet - while Monero does), it's my understanding that public bitcoins would have to be moved into the side chain, correct?  As we have seen with tor, even the movement from non-privacy to privacy is circumspect.  The NSA has openly stated they have an interest in anyone who sees the need to run tor, and that's not ok.  Privacy must be inherent into a protocol; it can't be a Sega CD optional add-on feature.  
  
Otherwise the entire idea of a digital cash system falls apart... you may have something of value, and I do believe bitcoin will continue to carry value for a long time to come but I am skeptical that it won't eventually be overtaken by Monero.  A larger network is very resilient vs. an upstart one - unless the upstart network operates so much better that not only are a large portion of users from the first network attracted, but new users to the entire concept are more attracted to this new network as well.  See the Facebook disruption of MySpace for an example.  Most of Facebook's users never even had a MySpace account; Facebook successfully eroded enough MySpace users to generate its own momentum.  
  
I believe Monero will do the same.  
 
P.S. Great link, btw.  The author shares a lot of my beliefs, though bitcoin being the only necessary ledger is not one of them.  What causes a language to supplant another, or for a religion to supplant another (or for that matter a form of government)?  Many of those same tenets are shared in the 'game' of crypto-adoption.
  

[rpietila]

...liquid diamonds...

+1 Welcome to CK!

[Jungian]

Privacy is not a huge issue at the moment (at least not as big as most XMR supporters(I'm one of them) tend to make it). We don't see the dark market vendors being targeted via block-chain analysis, so that's obviously not the weakest link for that kind of user, and I think NSA level surveillance will be able to track XMR-users aswell using the same methods.

 
  
I made the mistake of thinking it was about privacy at first as well.  It bears repeating that bitcoin is not true digital cash.  It is a digital collectible because each bitcoin has a unique and traceable history.  One bitcoin does not actually equal one bitcoin, a fact that will only become more prevalent over time.  We saw the first tremor of this when the community 'banded together' to not accept coins stolen from an exchange.  It sounded good in principle, but it has deep implications for bitcoin's ability to serve as "the world wide ledger".  Even if Russia accepts bitcoin one day, it does no good if a politician can say, "Bitcoins mined in America are illegal and not to be trusted or used."  Also, when you have a currency where if a larger holder (like Satoshi Nakamoto) decided to spend any of his coins it would cause a spectacular market crash, that is not a fungible or viable world currency.  (imagine if Warren Buffet buying a coffee with some of his money were capable of causing the dollar to crash?)  
  
People like to defend bitcoin because it has a larger network, but if all other things were equal, and both bitcoins and moneros were each worth $100 each with one million users each, which would you choose as your preferred network?  The answer is obvious.  With optional view-keys, better cryptography, a better emissions curve (with a perpetual emission to replace lost and destroyed coins), and no hard coded block size, Monero is the superior choice in every respect (on top of any fundamental privacy or fungibility advances).  
  
Even if we were to make Monero a side-chain (something that doesn't even exist yet - while Monero does), it's my understanding that public bitcoins would have to be moved into the side chain, correct?  As we have seen with tor, even the movement from non-privacy to privacy is circumspect.  The NSA has openly stated they have an interest in anyone who sees the need to run tor, and that's not ok.  Privacy must be inherent into a protocol; it can't be a Sega CD optional add-on feature.  
  
Otherwise the entire idea of a digital cash system falls apart... you may have something of value, and I do believe bitcoin will continue to carry value for a long time to come but I am skeptical that it won't eventually be overtaken by Monero.  A larger network is very resilient vs. an upstart one - unless the upstart network operates so much better that not only are a large portion of users from the first network attracted, but new users to the entire concept are more attracted to this new network as well.  See the Facebook disruption of MySpace for an example.  Most of Facebook's users never even had a MySpace account; Facebook successfully eroded enough MySpace users to generate its own momentum.  
  
I believe Monero will do the same.  
  
P.S. Great link, btw.  The author shares a lot of my beliefs, though bitcoin being the only necessary ledger is not one of them.  What causes a language to supplant another, or for a religion to supplant another (or for that matter a form of government)?  Many of those same tenets are shared in the 'game' of crypto-adoption.
  

Alright! Some great points!

Regarding side-chains. Yes, they don't exist and we don't know if they ever will, but for the sake of argument lets pretend they will, and also will work as intended.
Yes, they would be pegged to bitcoin and you would have to transfer them there. But that is the same as with XMR. You still have an on-ramp to get XMR, you already do that with BTC exclusively, right? And now you even have to use an exchange instead of just BTC->SXMR(sidechain XMR).
And if the community would feel they needed more privacy they would just move all the BTC there and transfer the whole value of the BTC-network to the SXMR with no loss value. I don't see why that would be a real problem.

If Russia wanted to ban parts of the network, well, I guess they could try, but they could just as easily ban the whole XMR network? It's just as hard/easy?

a better emissions curve (with a perpetual emission to replace lost and destroyed coins)

Personally I prefer a deflationary curve. Again Paul Sztorc http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/deflation-the-last-word/

People like to defend bitcoin because it has a larger network, but if all other things were equal, and both bitcoins and moneros were each worth $100 each with one million users each, which would you choose as your preferred network?

Sure, but if all things were equal, why wouldn't you pick Litecoin over BTC if all things were equal? It sure had some improvements over BTC (no satoshi-coins overhead, fixed some issues e.tc.). But that's the whole point. That the value of the value network is a function of itself. They are just not equal.

Maybe it comes down to whether or not BTC will have good enugh privacy so that it can be continued to be used as digital cash (IMO it can be done now. It's safe to use it on dark markets where as you can't use XMR for really anything yet (without tunneling it via BTC)), and adopt privacy features fast enough for it to be usable. I think it will but we'll see. I ofc will continue to support XMR as the tech is incredible but the hope to be a early investor in "the next BTC" might cloud my judgement regarding its future value.

[elrippo]

So is Monero the Platinum to Bitcoin's gold?  

  
I have posted this picture before, but it bears repeating that Bitcoin fulfilled all the requirements of being the first digital collectible (which was monumental - not to take anything away from it), but it was not the next true evolution of money.  That may be a bold statement, but it's true.  Cryptonote, and Monero by extension, is the next big evolution of money - and as a result will (imho) overtake bitcoin by value in time.

Why will not BTC just incorporate the best features of XMR into its ecosystem? It's reasonable to assume that the privacy issues will be solved once they become more critical.
Both cryptonote and zerocash can be side chains. And on top of that we have confidential transactions and various other privacy focused solutions.

Truthcoin inventor Paul Sztorc

http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/basics/

Clearly, Bitcoin’s market-cap / network-effect dominates. Also-obvious: there is absolutely no reason to switch from Bitcoin to any other ‘money-only’ system (Litecoin, Dogecoin, Feathercoin). Only slightly-less-obvious: there is no reason to switch to any ‘new-features’ system, either! Thanks to the permissionless nature of software development, new features which are good enough will eventually be incorporated into the biggest-network (Bitcoin). By “good enough” I mean “worth doing”, I measure “worth doing” by the response of the community…this logic is so perfectly true, it approaches tautology!

Privacy is not a huge issue at the moment (at least not as big as most XMR supporters(I'm one of them) tend to make it). We don't see the dark market vendors being targeted via block-chain analysis, so that's obviously not the weakest link for that kind of user, and I think NSA level surveillance will be able to track XMR-users aswell using the same methods.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge XMR-supporter and I love what the team is doing. I even own a considerable amount (almost 8 full moneroes ) of them, but I see the chances of XMR overtaking BTC as very slim. The altcoins are a casino and a lab and it's fun to be there and join the teams, but so far only BTC is money and I think it will stay that way, because I don't see any problem that BTC can't overcome really.

Well, obviously you are wrong here. Please keep the takedown of silk road in mind. Transaction- and blockchainanalysis was one part of the LEA´s tactics to deanonyminize the sellers and buyers of illegal goods.
TOR does not protect you if you login to your gmail or facebook account through it.
In my personal opinion, contrary to yours, cryptonote will protect your privacy until some 0-day exploit comes along.
The NSA has also a strong interest in this protocol, as the NSA also runs some TOR relays, this is stated as a fact.
The interest of the LEA´s towards Monero will rise proportionally to the adoption of it. When VPN providers and for example "DarkMarkets" will accept payment via Monero, these businessnes are forced to open their records as always, regardless how the LEA´s get a hold of these.
This all makes a point for Monero, as BTC is not able to protect your transaction.

[papa_lazzarou]

Can Monero do something like this?

https://dashtalk.org/threads/new-video-translations.6159/

Many people still cannot be reached by our current materials because of language barriers.

it could. I'm guessing that kind of material cost thousands of dollars to make. But first step to making such a thing would be a script.

Well, when the time comes... Two of my buddies could possibly go about translating stuff.  One of them speaks Mandarin and the other Japanese.  I still have yet to have seen them for some time now... but I'm sure if I were to meet up with them for a couple of beers and talk to them a bit, they would be interested.  Though, they are currently living in the countries where those languages apply.

I think the time has come already. We need marketing to grow our user base. More users can help fund more donations towards development.

Ok, well I'll be sure to try and contact them... Is there a video that is currently out about monero that would need to be translated though?  I'm sure they would need help in how to do voice overs too.

Perhaps this presentation from fluffypony could be a start. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEVm1dMn5Ks

Is there a repository for this kind of stuff?

Edit:
There is now: https://github.com/papaLazzarou/MoneroTranslations

The youtube auto transcript is messy, a good english transcription would help the translation effort a lot. If someone could pick it up...

I also started the portuguese transcription in case anyone is interested in helping:
https://github.com/papaLazzarou/MoneroTranslations/blob/master/Monero%20Talk%20at%20Bitcoin%20Conference/pt_PT.txt

[osensei]

The 1 TB version i built comes to ~$300 with a 750 ti, so you could get 250 h/s. And these are all retail component costs. Perhaps someday I'd be able to get scale prices somehow. Proper cooling has proven to be a pain - its difficult to find high quality small form factor fans - fans that could last 5 years of constant runtime. And then the question of how loud the fans can be.

The best solution for a 10 year low- or no-maintenance device is to go completely fanless. Forget the GPU unless you can find something decent that is fanless and can be mounted in a fanless chassis (which requires very low thermal output) and instead use a high efficiency CPU with good hash rate like the one we talked about on IRC (hash rate is roughly 120 for 15 watts, possibly less) with a brick PSU. It might require maintenance if the HD dies, but that's about it. Switching to SSD would reduce that. Even with with HD you can't do it $300 though. Not quite yet, but maybe next year.

Unfortunately what kills the price here is that the really cheap CPUs (Celeron, Atom, etc.) can't mine XMR well, but many of them can mine AEON. If you accept a much lower hash rate and efficiency you can still do it, and probably come in below $300 for the whole system.

There's this Tronsmart Ara x5 for $150 which is fanless, has an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 CPU (2MB cache and supports AES-NI!), 2GB of RAM, and 32GB eMMC.

I wonder how much H/s it could pull, given its 2MB cache and AES-NI support. Only downside (for me) is that it doesn't support Linux yet.

Also there's this Kickstarter campaign for a Raspberry-Pi style board with an Atom x5-Z8300 CPU for ~$100. This one will support Linux.

[GingerAle]

The 1 TB version i built comes to ~$300 with a 750 ti, so you could get 250 h/s. And these are all retail component costs. Perhaps someday I'd be able to get scale prices somehow. Proper cooling has proven to be a pain - its difficult to find high quality small form factor fans - fans that could last 5 years of constant runtime. And then the question of how loud the fans can be.

The best solution for a 10 year low- or no-maintenance device is to go completely fanless. Forget the GPU unless you can find something decent that is fanless and can be mounted in a fanless chassis (which requires very low thermal output) and instead use a high efficiency CPU with good hash rate like the one we talked about on IRC (hash rate is roughly 120 for 15 watts, possibly less) with a brick PSU. It might require maintenance if the HD dies, but that's about it. Switching to SSD would reduce that. Even with with HD you can't do it $300 though. Not quite yet, but maybe next year.

Unfortunately what kills the price here is that the really cheap CPUs (Celeron, Atom, etc.) can't mine XMR well, but many of them can mine AEON. If you accept a much lower hash rate and efficiency you can still do it, and probably come in below $300 for the whole system.

There's this Tronsmart Ara x5 for $150 which is fanless, has an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 CPU (2MB cache and supports AES-NI!), 2GB of RAM, and 32GB eMMC.

I wonder how much H/s it could pull, given its 2MB cache and AES-NI support. Only downside (for me) is that it doesn't support Linux yet.

Also there's this Kickstarter campaign for a Raspberry-Pi style board with an Atom x5-Z8300 CPU for ~$100. This one will support Linux.

that and its a ~5 year box at current network usage... perhaps 2 year box at real usage. 32 gb?

how does it not support linux? for 150$ this could be a fun experiment.

[elrippo]

Can Monero do something like this?

https://dashtalk.org/threads/new-video-translations.6159/

Many people still cannot be reached by our current materials because of language barriers.

it could. I'm guessing that kind of material cost thousands of dollars to make. But first step to making such a thing would be a script.

Well, when the time comes... Two of my buddies could possibly go about translating stuff.  One of them speaks Mandarin and the other Japanese.  I still have yet to have seen them for some time now... but I'm sure if I were to meet up with them for a couple of beers and talk to them a bit, they would be interested.  Though, they are currently living in the countries where those languages apply.

I think the time has come already. We need marketing to grow our user base. More users can help fund more donations towards development.

Would you mind sharing your "default" text, that you use when you approach a service to endorse the use of XMR Monero. I would use it to endorse other services also, not so visible on the clearnet 

[osensei]

The 1 TB version i built comes to ~$300 with a 750 ti, so you could get 250 h/s. And these are all retail component costs. Perhaps someday I'd be able to get scale prices somehow. Proper cooling has proven to be a pain - its difficult to find high quality small form factor fans - fans that could last 5 years of constant runtime. And then the question of how loud the fans can be.

The best solution for a 10 year low- or no-maintenance device is to go completely fanless. Forget the GPU unless you can find something decent that is fanless and can be mounted in a fanless chassis (which requires very low thermal output) and instead use a high efficiency CPU with good hash rate like the one we talked about on IRC (hash rate is roughly 120 for 15 watts, possibly less) with a brick PSU. It might require maintenance if the HD dies, but that's about it. Switching to SSD would reduce that. Even with with HD you can't do it $300 though. Not quite yet, but maybe next year.

Unfortunately what kills the price here is that the really cheap CPUs (Celeron, Atom, etc.) can't mine XMR well, but many of them can mine AEON. If you accept a much lower hash rate and efficiency you can still do it, and probably come in below $300 for the whole system.

There's this Tronsmart Ara x5 for $150 which is fanless, has an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 CPU (2MB cache and supports AES-NI!), 2GB of RAM, and 32GB eMMC.

I wonder how much H/s it could pull, given its 2MB cache and AES-NI support. Only downside (for me) is that it doesn't support Linux yet.

Also there's this Kickstarter campaign for a Raspberry-Pi style board with an Atom x5-Z8300 CPU for ~$100. This one will support Linux.

that and its a ~5 year box at current network usage... perhaps 2 year box at real usage. 32 gb?

how does it not support linux? for 150$ this could be a fun experiment.

If block time is modified to 2 minutes then it should last longer. Also, you can always add an external storage.

Regarding Linux... I don't know, maybe it's not that hard to make it work but it doesn't support it officially, and I haven't found any guide on the net, though this device is pretty new so it may take some time for some guide to appear.

I just saw that it's on Amazon for $160: http://www.amazon.com/Tronsmart-Ara-X5-Windows-Graphics/dp/B0157QPLXM/

[phishead]

Privacy is not a huge issue at the moment (at least not as big as most XMR supporters(I'm one of them) tend to make it). We don't see the dark market vendors being targeted via block-chain analysis, so that's obviously not the weakest link for that kind of user, and I think NSA level surveillance will be able to track XMR-users aswell using the same methods.

 
  
I made the mistake of thinking it was about privacy at first as well.  It bears repeating that bitcoin is not true digital cash.  It is a digital collectible because each bitcoin has a unique and traceable history.  One bitcoin does not actually equal one bitcoin, a fact that will only become more prevalent over time.  We saw the first tremor of this when the community 'banded together' to not accept coins stolen from an exchange.  It sounded good in principle, but it has deep implications for bitcoin's ability to serve as "the world wide ledger".  Even if Russia accepts bitcoin one day, it does no good if a politician can say, "Bitcoins mined in America are illegal and not to be trusted or used."  Also, when you have a currency where if a larger holder (like Satoshi Nakamoto) decided to spend any of his coins it would cause a spectacular market crash, that is not a fungible or viable world currency.  (imagine if Warren Buffet buying a coffee with some of his money were capable of causing the dollar to crash?)  
  -snip-
  

I really believe in what you talk about here, bitcoin is in fact the world first collectible item that's digital... really I believe it will serve as the "gold standard" to other upcoming cryptos in the future, so I wouldn't really say that bitcoin is going to go out like myspace.

Let's take an example... Casascius physical bitcoins.  He was the first one to ever have created physical bitcoins and funded them himself which makes it even more valuable... why? Because people can track down the coins he funded on there, and prove that he, in fact, did send those coins to the specific address.... a 1BTC token goes for about 3BTC's now and days, because it's truly a collectible now and people are willing to pay for it... I think it will even increase more in value as time goes on and finding these things will become even more rare in 5 -10 years time.

[phishead]

Can Monero do something like this?

https://dashtalk.org/threads/new-video-translations.6159/

Many people still cannot be reached by our current materials because of language barriers.

it could. I'm guessing that kind of material cost thousands of dollars to make. But first step to making such a thing would be a script.

Well, when the time comes... Two of my buddies could possibly go about translating stuff.  One of them speaks Mandarin and the other Japanese.  I still have yet to have seen them for some time now... but I'm sure if I were to meet up with them for a couple of beers and talk to them a bit, they would be interested.  Though, they are currently living in the countries where those languages apply.

I think the time has come already. We need marketing to grow our user base. More users can help fund more donations towards development.

Ok, well I'll be sure to try and contact them... Is there a video that is currently out about monero that would need to be translated though?  I'm sure they would need help in how to do voice overs too.

Perhaps this presentation from fluffypony could be a start. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEVm1dMn5Ks

Is there a repository for this kind of stuff?

Edit:
There is now: https://github.com/papaLazzarou/MoneroTranslations

The youtube auto transcript is messy, a good english transcription would help the translation effort a lot. If someone could pick it up...

I also started the portuguese transcription in case anyone is interested in helping:
https://github.com/papaLazzarou/MoneroTranslations/blob/master/Monero%20Talk%20at%20Bitcoin%20Conference/pt_PT.txt

Ok, well if I get a chance I will talk to them this weekend... but I'm sure they would be more interested in the money aspect rather than helping some random group out for free, so could we potentially influence them to do it by throwing a little xmr their way?  I could imagine if I started out the conversation asking them to translate a 50 minute speech, on something they hardly know or maybe not care about, for free... they wouldn't be interested.

[OrientA]

If block time is modified to 2 minutes then it should last longer. Also, you can always add an external storage.

Block time has been discussed many time previously. As Monero is not being used, just in distribution stage, even 10 min block time is acceptable. However, the community decides 1 min block time is fine.

[nioc]

If block time is modified to 2 minutes then it should last longer. Also, you can always add an external storage.

Block time has been discussed many time previously. As Monero is not being used, just in distribution stage, even 10 min block time is acceptable. However, the community decides 1 min block time is fine.

Block time will most likely be changed to 2 minutes *soon*. 
After the 0.9 release which will be released **very soon**.

[smooth]

If block time is modified to 2 minutes then it should last longer. Also, you can always add an external storage.

Block time has been discussed many time previously. As Monero is not being used, just in distribution stage, even 10 min block time is acceptable. However, the community decides 1 min block time is fine.

Block time will most likely be changed to 2 minutes *soon*. 
After the 0.9 release which will be released **very soon**.

Yes, and the main discussion of this was on the official forum: forum.getmonero.org

FWIW, I agree with OrientA, although no one really made that point in the discussion.

If there were an easy way to have the block time automatically adjust itself to usage, such an algorithm would probably set it very high right now and then decrease if and when usage increases.

[cAPSLOCK]

There's this Tronsmart Ara x5 for $150 which is fanless, has an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 CPU (2MB cache and supports AES-NI!), 2GB of RAM, and 32GB eMMC.

I wonder how much H/s it could pull, given its 2MB cache and AES-NI support. Only downside (for me) is that it doesn't support Linux yet.

Bah.  I could have linux up and running on this in 5 minutes. 

[smooth]

There's this Tronsmart Ara x5 for $150 which is fanless, has an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 CPU (2MB cache and supports AES-NI!), 2GB of RAM, and 32GB eMMC.

Unfortunately the cache on Atom is 1 MB for each 2 cores, thus not usable for Cryptonight. Well, usable but the performance is poor.

The power usage on those is so low that the mining efficiency still isn't terrible, but it is mediocre.

It has USB ports so when the internal storage runs out you can plug in a drive and keep going.