I'm guess it's also true that HN is definitely the wrong audience for this post. As the author suggests, if you spend all day in VScode/VIM, you're among the segment of computer users who looks at images the least as a percentage of time spent on a computer.

Yes, but at least there are a decent amount of font 'connoisseurs' here ;)

I caught it on my Android 12 without full screening. He's talking about the background, not the foreground. The backgrounds color noticeably changes from shot to shot around edges.

I have to zoom in to really notice that. But both the jpg and webp have distortion - webp slightly more. Both have difficulty with edges.

I think we're talking about two different things. You're not noticing the forest for the trees. I'm talking about big huge macro effects that become more apparent when you zoom out, not less.

There is a difference in the gradients of color. One hasn't the guy looking backlit and one doesn't.

At default zoom the image is 20% of the width of my monitor so it's hard to see artefacts. When zoomed in the posterization is noticeable but jpeg at 85% is about as bad as webp. I don't see any substantial difference in lighting.

It's like the audiophile equivalent of using $500 speaker wire. Nobody normal really cares about the difference, if there's really any difference at all.