After several weeks of flatness, and compared to previous increases of up to 40%, this little 10% bump is long overdue.

Having said that, it is important to reiterate that difficulty follows price, not the other way around.

The fact that the difficulty curve has largely flattened in recent weeks is a function of the price.

If price goes up, much more expenditure will happen in the mining space, because it will be profitable to do so.  If the price goes down? So will difficulty... eventually.

*also* current diff is 41.27 billion, next estimated diff is 43.83 billion. This amounts to only roughly a 6% increase, which is hardly anything to get all hot and bothered about.

When the difficulty starts to decrease by 10 or 20 percent... THEN you should start to worry!