[valadaptive]

The header image in the article is a 2400x1600 PNG that is 500KB large, apparently due to subtle dithering making it hard to compress. Converting it to a visually-identical .avif (quality 90, 12-bit color depth) takes it all the way down to 15KB.

[latexr]

For an image which isn’t even interesting or illustrative of the issue. Hero images on blog posts have run their course, I can’t remember the last time I felt anything positive by encountering one. They make the page load longer, force us to scroll to start reading, and are forgotten as soon as they go out of sight.

[sva_]

Indeed, the website transfers 1.18mb (compressed) to deliver 6.7kb of text. Kind of ironic.

[throwaway2046]

I'm guessing it could be even smaller if it was designed as a SVG file. Although the glow effect with the fading colors would probably need to be simplified.