See, that’s the problem with people nowadays?They want to minimalise everything.

They should just slow down and breathe.

I think people have a hard time wrapping their heads around it because it's very rare to have this sort of problem in the real world. Typically you have a specific size container and need to arrange things in it. You usually don't get to pick an arbitrary size container or area for storage. Even if you for something like shipping, you'd probably want to break this into a 4x4 and a separate single box to better fit with other things being shipped as well. Or if it is storage you'd want to be able to see the sides or tops. Plus you have 3 dimensions to work with on the real world.

And the next perfect divisor one that would hold all the ones in the OP pic would be 5x5. 25 > 17, last I checked.

He's saying the same thing. Because it's not an integer power of 2 you can't have a integer square solution. Thus the densest packing puts some boxes diagonally.

Good job. It'skinda what I expected, except for the glow. But I won't ask about that.

Fractal might have meant that when Mandelbrot coined the name, but that is not what it means now.

I feel like the pixalation on the rotated squares is enough to say this picture is not proof.

Again I am not saying they are wrong, just that it would be extremely easy make a picture where it looks like all the squares are all the same size.

Visual proofs can be deceptive, e.g. the infinite chocolate bar.