Did the 4 core CPU have 1/4th of the transistor count of the 16 core CPU? Then I'd expect it to be much slower of course. Point of Linus was, a 4 core CPU with same transistor count (used for more cache, better out-of-order execution logic, more virtual registers, and so on), as 16 core CPU will be faster on almost every task. So cores beyond 4 (the number Linus threw as the ballpark count) make sense only, if you really can not spend any more transistors in making those 4 cores faster, but still have die space to spare.

Javascript is generally used in event driven manner, so it will perform quite well on a single core. Firefox having trouble loading multiple pages simultaneously should still be IO-bound, not CPU-bound, and if the engine has trouble, then it's an SW architecture problem where more cores will not really help.

Point of Linus was, taking a 6 core CPU, and replacing 2 cores with more cache and more transistors per core should make almost anything on Desktop run faster.

Linus doesn't so much say that parallelism is useless, he's saying that more cache and bigger, more efficient cores is much better. Therefore, increased number of cores at the cost of single core efficiency is just stupid for general purpose computing. Better just stick more cache to the die, instead of adding a core. Or that is how I read what he says.

I'd say, number of cores should scale with IO bandwidth. You need enough cores to make parallel compilation be CPU bound. Is 4 cores enough for that? Well, I don't know, but if the cores are efficient (highly parallel out-of-order execution) and have large caches, I'd wager IO lags far behind today. Is IO catching up? When will it catch up, if it is? No idea. Maybe someone here does?

The problem with the moon and carbon dioxide is, just exhaling a few times will make the CO2 ppm in lunar atmosphere rise to Jurassic levels. And then next thing you know, there will be allosauruses roaming about eating the colonists. So going to moon is no solution, we'd need to be even more careful about carbon emissions there.

But all is not lost. Things are just going to be bad, but just how bad, that remains to be seen.

On the other hand our ancestors lived self-sufficiently off this land for millenia. On the other hand, that was not very fun life. But then, even if global civilization collapses, information does not disappear overnight. I for one will teach my kids both to make fire with flint and steel, and create and program a robot which can make fire with flint and steel. That should cover a lot of possible futures.

Sounds like you are not seeing the forest for the trees...

Have you ever actually worked with R&D engineers and scientists? They don't convert money into cool stuff. They convert cool problems into cool stuff, given sufficient resources to allow solving the given cool problem.

Not just that. The only way to win is to make sure nobody plays.

I'm continually amazed how humanity has managed to successfully keep winning this particular game for almost 70 years now! But how long can this winning streak continue?

Well, I don't know about that, but at least it was better than Oculus Rift, if images in TFA are anything to go by. Something like semi-spherical 320 by 240 degrees with 3D zone of maybe 120 by 240 degrees in the middle, or thereabouts.

Also, it's not just the vision, the display system goes with lateral twin ultra low bass audio arrays, capable of generating fully spherical acoustic environment awareness experience.

Without concrete suggestion on which games to play, or how to select the games, and all the practicalities involved, this is a pointless suggestion.

But, at the point we're going to be intelligent machines too...

I'd suggest EU countries of central Europe. That's such a mess that it will be very difficult to clamp certain basic freedoms down, especially considering how there are still people who experienced various dictatorships first hand. Of course non-EU citizen staying there would depend on your own country keeping your passport valid, but if things really got so bad that you would not get a new visa, you could probably apply for political asylum...

And of course moving out of the country, or just going abroad for holiday or business certainly qualifies as exporting or publishing technology, if you happen to know anything which qualifies as restricted information. Australians, better move out while you can!

Or Afghanistan. Or North Korea. Iran... maybe not but Iran has oil money and is much bigger. Anyway, pretty well among enemies of US.

No, success for a small country under US hostilities is not having having thousands upon thousands of civilian deaths while under US occupation/protection to establish democratic government. I think Cuba qualifies.