Testnet people need a pool that pays for shares found. A CPU will still be able to submit valid shares easily and quickly receive a small amount of Bitcoin Testnet.
Math time (and correct me if I made a mistake): let's assume difficulty 100M, and let's assume a CPU is fast enough to solve a block at difficulty 1 in 1 minute. That means the CPU will earn 50*6*24/60/100M = 0.0000012 coins per day. That's not going earn enough to test anything, as long as long as there are ASIC miners active.
at least transactions are being included in blocks and are flowing smoothly.
Not in
the last 14 transactions.