time for LTC difficulty to go exponential

free depends on your point of view I guess.
it's usually in exchange for your time.
Everyone is free to determine the value of their own time, I usually value mine high enough not to be bothered with faucets.
Nevertheless I can imagine some people have more free time than me on their hands and will grasp the opportunity, for them it can be a great way of making some easy money.

I'm not thinking about buying or selling short term, so there is no real reason to keep looking at bitcoinity, but i can't help myself 

I feel sorry for you for losing your coins, I've seen enough of this type of messages to urge me not to leave any funds on any exchange too long (more then one reason not to do that).
I am not an IT security expert but I do read security related blogs and news sites on a daily basis just out of interest.
From what i can see, it is mind blowing to see how many threats are out there, that are known and found by the good guys.
Now add to that your own estimation of the amount of threats that have not been detected and rest assured, the risk of getting infected is very real, even for security conscious ppl.
I urge everyone to think about how safe their funds are and what extra steps they could take to secure them some more, the risk is very real, you'll be sorry for not taking a few hours now that could have saved you a lot of money.....
Find out about some of the things you can do to secure your btc better, like paper wallets and two factor authentication, and play around with them with small amounts until you feel comfortbale using them.

Hi yall,
long time lurker checking in,
got interested in btc around march 2011.
Having trouble wrapping my small brain around the complexity of the beast that is bitcoin, very fascinated by the possibilities and very curious where this rollercoaster will take us.
been doing some low level gpu mining (500 MHash) for about a year and a half and made a few purchases on intersango and btc24.
this morning I sold just enough btc to recover all the costs I made up to this point.
so even if we go to 0€ I wont lose any money, and still had a fun ride ;-)