When an engine idles (with no load), it produces relatively little heat. Comparatively, an engine running faster, under load produces much more heat. The engine will warm up more quickly and less evenly when loaded, likely leading to thermal stress, and possible mismatched thermal expansion. On the other hand, modern lubricants are very good at handling different temperatures.
The other thing to consider is that the engine is only one part of the vehicle, and various other components of the drivetrain may actually suffer more thermal stress from the idling than from immediate driving.
I think this is the key difference between now and what used to be.
Also suspect modern engines are more carefully designed to handle thermal expansion.
The only risk described here applies to prolonged idling only and is a long term risk mitigated by reasonable elwarmuo and oil changes. The short term risk is the rotating assembly and value train is far more immediate.
Fuel injection has convinced people that they can just jump in a cold car, fire it up and be fine. Doing so, especially in extreme cold is just incredibly damaging.
There's a pretty good description here: https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/779/journal-bearin...
They are almost exclusively air/oil-cooled, low-rpm engines, and a majority of them have designs dating back 50+ years.
it seems very unlikely that modern refinements have completely reversed the concerns.
For a water cooled engine, there is a water passage around 3/16” from the cylinder wall which helps to bring the cylinder up to an even temperature more quickly and prevents a high heat flux from expanding the piston to the point where it can scuff the walls.
It’s not only oil pressure that is a concern for a cold-start to operating temps.
These engines are often large enough to park a car inside, however.
Once the oil temp starts to get above 150F it very quickly gets to the operating temp (220F), so I view that as the point that it's okay to go above 3000 RPM.
If there are oil heaters then they must be far away from the oil reservoir temperature sensor and only have a local effect. As you say, that sounds like a feature for very large engines. It's probably a good practice to be gentle to car engines with cold oil.
https://store.ngpracing.com/acm-oil-cooler-heat-exchanger-1-...
I know one of the engineers that worked at the car design and when questioned, he explained (going off memory here) that people used to warm the engine, then started driving normally, and while the engine is hot, the trasmission and differentials aren't, but you don't have a good way of warming them up while standing still, so drive off slowly and carefully without asking full torque from your engine, and it will help warm the whole thing.
Basically, drive like a grandma for ~10-20 minutes before even moderately giving it the business.
The flip side of this is that, especially if you’ve got direct port fuel injection, you’ll actually want to give it the business on occasion (once properly warmed up) for best operation, as the detergent from an increased fuel spray can help to break up carbon buildup on the top of your pistons. Either way you’ll likely want to book in carbon cleanup as a periodic maintenance item.
So all that's reasonable is simply to be aware of the ideals, and by inference the anti-ideals, and let them guide whatever freedom you do have, while just using the thing however you need to.
If you need to actually use your laptop on batteries freque tly, then go ahead and allow it to charge to 100% instead of limiting it to 50% to 80%. If you live somewhere cold and need to use a device in the cold, well then you just go ahead and use it outside of the ideal temperature range.
But the knowledge is still useful because there are still plenty of times where you could do any number of things and don't much care which since they're all equal effort, but they aren't all equally good for your equipment, and all else being equal, you would be just as happy to adopt a habit that gives x extra years of lufe than one that removes x years of life, if you simply knew about it.
Like, you don't really care that much where in your house you plop some device when you're not using it for weeks at a time, but a shelf in a covered cabinet is better than a table in direct sunlight, is better than sitting directly on top of a steam radiator.
Your work commute precludes the absolute ideal, but within your limits there is still a lot of opportunity to do things more vs less optimally. You might intentionally take local roads to the next exit, or for merely 10 miles even the whole way.
Or just don't even worry about it at all because diffs and trannies are really not what die first or most, and trannies do warm up some just from the torque converter pumping and the radiator loop.
And manuals just aren't a problem no matter what. They may shift harder but they aren't being hurt much. In any climate that even has cold, everything else will rust to junk before a manual tranny even needs a new clutch let alone any kind of actual wear to the gears or synchros.
FYI
And I agree with your last point, it was the other thing that was bothering me by it. What exactly is actionable here, to me it's just normal wear and tear.
My understanding about warming up an engine before putting load on it had nothing to do with fuel or power steering fluid, it was about thermal expansion of all the machined parts that suffer wear if they are run under load while they are loose-fitting from being cold. This is a thing even in summer and merely worse in winter.
This article barely talks about this and doesn't say anything intelligible but just says "stress" from stepping on it right away.
Maybe that issue also no longer exists on modern engines, but nothing in this article explains that.
Mostly everything this says about why idling is supposedly bad, applies to operating the thing at all, idling or not. The conclusion would be "don't use your car at all in winter"
Well, if you're going to use it at all, then you're already doing the damage, so you might as well be comfortable and have an easier time clearing the windows. The device only exists in the first place to serve you.