I’m confused by your defensiveness. What I express has the same browser support, but is
correct (rather than leaving a tiny gap that is theoretically possible to encounter, though vanishingly improbable in reality), doesn’t depend on esoteric knowledge of the meaning of a 0.02px difference, and sticks with just the
one magic number which is obviously desirable for various maintenance purposes. On the downside, “not all and (min-width: 480px)” is an idiosyncratic spelling, and you run the risk of people reaching for “not (min-width: 480px)” instead, which works in current browsers but sheds support for somewhat older browsers (with Safari being the last to get it, only a couple of months ago).
(In the wild, I’ve encountered exact-value overlap, which is obviously wrong and very easy to trigger, −1px, which is obviously wrong and fairly easy to trigger, −0.1px which is fairly safe, and −0.01px, but I don’t recall ever encountering −0.02px.)
If the article had used a negated media query, would you be arguing for using a non-negated .98?
(In the wild, I’ve encountered exact-value overlap, which is obviously wrong and very easy to trigger, −1px, which is obviously wrong and fairly easy to trigger, −0.1px which is fairly safe, and −0.01px, but I don’t recall ever encountering −0.02px.)
If the article had used a negated media query, would you be arguing for using a non-negated .98?