Interestingly enough, the graph I linked (and didn't look closely at before posting) shows this week that hashes and possibly also difficulty seem to have begun

Interestingly enough, the graph I linked (and didn't look closely at before posting) shows this week that hashes and possibly also difficulty seem to have begun to take the first slight nose-dive in a long time. It looks like the difficulty might even go down this time, in about 10 days when it's recalculated. Some people (more than the opposing numbers) are apparently turning off their machines now (ostensibly it's not profitable to start/continue mining at this time.) For a long time, people "in-the-know" have been honestly telling folks that it's much cheaper and less risky to go out and buy bitcoins directly than it is to try and get involved in mining. I'll leave it for you to sort out all the additional potential conflicts of interest added there.