Browsers are a concern for the same reason a cloud providers: you are running untrusted code in a sandboxed VM, and Spectre allows you to potentially exfiltrate data from outside the sandbox. Cloud providers are a bigger concern because they're more likely to contain interesting data* and because it's harder to exploit Spectre via Javascript than native code, but there are Spectre proof-of-concepts written in JS.

* interesting to an attacker, relative to the effort required

You have things that need low latency. VoIP, online gaming, and http (especially for audio/video), maybe ssh traffic, etc., and then you have things where it's okay to lag a bit, especially things like email, usenet, etc.

I can go a few seconds or even minutes longer between reloading the newsgroups I'm reading (I forget what the protocol word is, XLIST?) if it means I'm not going to catch a sticky grenade to the face in Call of Duty: World at War. I don't mind if my email shows up a couple minutes late if it means my VoIP calls are intelligible -- and I've been on my cell to a VoIP user where I got maybe 2/3rds of every sentence because they were downloading something.

Honestly, this doesn't bother me. I'd be happier if it were me doing the shaping, but I get where they're coming from.

(Yes, I have a cable ISP, for some reason.)

Uh. That five hours...

Double woosh?

Man does not live in a vacuum.

Google it again. This thread is the single result.

NYRGHRHGHGHHGHGHHHH

OJ.

Man. Am I in the wrong line of work.

That's not funny. My best friend's girlfriend's second cousin's roommate's cat died that way.

What's a "VCR"? ;)

Hours?

No. This could work to our advantage.

Insert curses into the Windows source code.

Dunno if this is what you were getting at, but back in the day, there was no income tax; the federal government was expected to make its "living" off interstate commerce.

Or so I'm told -- please enlighten me if I've been misinformed.