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What I want to know is who decided to break px, the last thing we need is yet another screwball physical measurement, css was already full of them. But what "tut tut, everybody is using px and these new hi-dpi displays are rendering things really tiny, we can't have that" and now px as a useful unit is ruined.

Is there a way to use real pixels? My, admittedly quick, search says no. at least nothing jumps out at me from the spec.

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px is still a useful unit. the user's operating system applying a scaling fator doesn't make it not useful.

if the user's operating system is configured to draw pixels at a 1:1 ratio, your pixels will be drawn at a 1:1 ratio. if the user's operating system is configured to draw pixels at a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio, you as a web developer don't get to override that, but you're still addressing pixels directly. if you want to write software that manages the user's hardware directly without giving them options to override it, the web is probably not the right platform for you.

No one decided to break it, it was 1/96th of an inch from the beginning.

The problem with different screens having different pixel densities was already present and obvious in 1996.

"Real" pixels are useless if you don't know anything about the screen you're going to render on.

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