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So here am I, average Internet consumer sitting and sipping coffee, doing nothing but wondering why my fonts look so much better almost everywhere I look.

I still vaguely remember those disgusting, misaligned, aliased Linux fonts of the 2000s. What the heck happened since then? I certainly didn't do much about it. Well, maybe tweaked a setting or two, but nothing major.

Are we using newer fonts, are we smarter about font choice or are the same old fonts appearing better on LCD screens because rendering, hinting and anti-aliasing algorithms work so much better?

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    I think in short it comes down to 1) better screens aka hardware and 2) better rendering on the software side. But your question is quite broad to answer besides that and the answer will change with time so I'm not sure how it'll be received on this site
    – Zach Saucier
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 21:42
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    As @ZachSaucier said, the short answer is better quality screens. Hand held devices have pixel sizes many times smaller than computer screens from 10 years ago. Heck, even most desktop computer screens now have significantly smaller pixels than screens 10 years ago. The smaller the pixels, the better everything looks.
    – Lucien Stals
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 23:29

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This question seems more oriented towards technology than graphic design per se, but as other commenters have noted, technology has improved - namely screens got better and could display more pixels in a given area (hardware) and that rendering and hinting algorithms got better (software). Another possible reason for improved font rendering would be the rise of LCDs over CRTs - we no longer need to deal with painfully slow refresh rates.

Moving beyond your original question about font rendering, perhaps the biggest breakthrough for fonts and graphic design in the last 10 years would be the successful inclusion and implementation of web fonts. Websites can now utilize rich typographic features that were previously impossible.

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