FTA by George R. R. Martin

I've been a developer since Cupcake & owner since Eclair of LG, Motorola, OnePlus & multiple Nexus & Pixel phones. This update was the least beneficial & most bug filled I've experienced.

I've fed back more than a dozen bugs in Android 12 (on Pixel 4a 5G).
The message app crashing when receiving a text.
Random screen color change (users don't even have this capability!) requiring a reboot to fix.
Touchscreen alignment issues (ability to calibrate removed years ago).
Do Not Disturb fails to let through texts from starred contacts.
etc.

Most personally annoying is the removal of a very long-time feature that allowed me to choose which app opens a web link each time I select one (you know, Intents--it was removed in spite of previous, multilevel communication with tech support when Android 11 UI changes made this mode almost impossible to restore if you accidentally chose one app permanently--I'm calling removing a feature that was clearly still in use a bug...if not in the O/S, in the company that's too big to link customer feedback to product design (or to care)--I can tell you my company would call it a bug & make me restore it).

I'd like to revert to Android 11. Nothing they actually changed was of any interest to me.

If the YT Roku "channel" disappears, I recommend Web Video Cast. It will play any web page's video on your Roku, including TY (I just checked).

Due to job changes, I've recently returned to C++ from nearly a decade of Java & C#. It has been kind of a culture shock, completely the opposite of when I learned C++ coming from C. A lot of updates since I last worked with this language.

I'm currently creating a library from scratch, and once I understood how to use std::unique_ptr, and ensured the library was almost all stateless, I find it works quite well (`using std::unique_ptr;` makes it easier). At about the 90% point of development, Valgrind finds no memory leaks. Honestly, I still haven't seen the need for the other pointer types (but I assume I'll hit that at some point). All my methods pass references to the unique_ptrs, except those that will take custody and probably delete them (typically the bookended destroyBlah() paired with the createBlah(), which requires std::move(uptr) even to compile).

Yes, this is different than retrofitting a huge project like Chrome, but at least so far, this seems to tell me C++ can be made as memory safe as other languages.

[The one issue about which I'm concerned is the compatibility of the library to its client apps, if they are compiled with a different version of the same compiler. Using unique_ptr in the client interface encourages clients to do the right thing, at least with my pointers. But if there is a compatibility issue (even with the normal C++ constructs), I fear the need to degrade to a C-style interface. I'll find out soon enough.]

Perhaps I'm just not running the right Firefox plugin (AdBlock, FlashBlock, etc.), but that in-your-face popup ad for a service I will actively avoid in retaliation for the ad itself is quite annoying. Does anyone know how to kill this thing?

As for the article, what does MC have against MS? I don't like MS, but I'm sure they'd have to do something to me personally before I'd be willing to spend $1 billion to prove it.

Xesdeeni