Not sure where you've got the 'few dozen' number from - that's not to my experience. Tandberg quote "1,000,000 passes on any area of tape, equates to over 20,000 end to end passes/260 full tape backup" http://www.tandbergdata.com/default/assets/File/Data_Sheets/...
Slirp was the equivalent of a userland, and user accessible version of SLIP. It allowed end users, to have IP equivalent connectivity if they had a shell account.
This was in the days when people had dial-in accounts to a shell, and wanted to use Mosaic web browser on their machines.
Under 'about', the rationale for STARTTLS is listed, which includes, but isn't exclusive to the HSTS like list:
- Increase STARTTLS adoption
- Increase the number of mailservers that actually validate certificates
- Maintain a STARTTLS Policy List to help prevent downgrade attacks on email services.