> Even at the larger sizes, a vector won't always look great. If the renderer doesn't fudge vector edges to snap to pixel edges, you'll end up with blurry edges instead of clean, sharp ones.
Do you have an example? Text is essentially "vector" these days, and I've never heard of anyone complaining that text rendered on a modern screen has blurry edges. The blurriness of some text is often "cleartype" or whatever tricks are being used to make it look better on low-dpi screens, which end up making it worse on modern displays.
Why do you think so? 20 years ago, everything was clearly in 1X. Now, the Windows default for many resolutions is 1.5X and my Macbook is 2X by default. iPhones and Androids are at least 2X scaled by default. iPhones in the last 2 years (like iPhone 12 and 13 are scaled 3X. So we've gone from 1X only, to 2X pretty much everywhere for desktop, with 3X on the latest phones.
Pixel art is a fun retro hobby, but as the article acknowledges, "we create work for high-resolution HDR screens." Icons, logos, and illustrations in general should be vector-first, so they will show up cleanly on HiDPI and in the future, 4X or 8X DPI interfaces. Too many icons and logos (even the Y on the top left here in HN) look blurry on a simple 4K monitor with 200% scaling (which is not uncommon now).
Wouldn't the manufacturers just take over, and only survive in the lowest cost place for manufacturing? The inventors/designers would get nothing and no one would want to do that anymore. What would be the incentive to share your open sourced designs?
Like it'd be pretty easy for one state-supported giant manufacturer to just build every single open sourced product, and sell it direct. The whole world would buy from this cheapest producer. No one else would get anything, and supply chains would become even more brittle.
Another way to think about it is if knockoffs were guaranteed identical to the originals, but at a lower price. Everyone would just buy the knockoffs. No one would want to make anything new anymore.
Seeing the amount 50k written out like that today, it seems like a pretty good deal. It looks like less the amount of annual equity that an entry level software developer makes. It's the price of a used truck, a kitchen remodel, a really nice family vacation for a month, etc.