I expected the computer to go to sleep while idle and for the brightness controller to now keep the computer brightness at the setting I keep it at.
What happened instead is the screen did not go to sleep and logout and I awoke to the screen flickering from excessively dim, to 100% bright, to black. With dim approximately 95% of the time, bright approximately 4% of the time and completely black 1% of the time and now the brightness controller really has no bearing whatsoever; however, also the sound is not working so this could be specific to the brightness/volume module ... here are some additional clues to the source of the problem...
Temporary Solution to stop the flickering but not fix the issue but may assist in troubleshooting the source of the problem: moving my brightness controller to about ~5%-10% area now keeps the screen on 100% brightness with no flickering. This at least makes the computer usable. Dragging the brightness controller anywhere produced the same result, minimum, maximum, inbetween, except for this sweet spot I have found in the low 5% range that is keeping the screen at 100% oddly enough which makes the computer usable. This is of course subject to change after writing for I am going 10 minutes strong right now.
I spent the past 6 hours troubleshooting myself with all the so-call fixes like switching from wayland to xorg and editing xorgconf.d file to include DRI 3 module, or to set tear to true etc. I modified the grub file to no avail. I have everything back to the default settings now. I do not believe this issue is hardware specific because I have 100% brightness with the brightness controller on around 5% which has stopped the flickering for now but now resolved the fact the brightness-controller is seemingly on the fritz; something to do with brightness and the graphics card drivers seems at fault. This computer has operated Ubuntu for approximately 90 days with absolute perfection until now; I love Ubuntu.
This bug is a possible security vulnerability as the computer should logout and be idle and not stay logged in with a flickering screen, also there is yet no proof an outside actor did not target this computer and cause this random defection nor was this instantiated after any updates and this began while the computer was idle and should have went to sleep but instead triggered this flickering.
Description: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
Release: 22.04
6.5.0-18-generic
OS TYPE 64-BIT
GNOME Version 42.9
Windowing System Wayland
Memory 16.0 GiB
Disk Capacity 256.1 GB
Intel® Core™ i7-6600U CPU @ 2.60GHz × 4
Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 520 (SKL GT2)
compatible controller: Intel Corporation Skylake GT2 [HD Graphics 520] (rev 07)
ost bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 08)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Skylake GT2 [HD Graphics 520] (rev 07)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21)
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21)
00:15.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 21)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI #1 (rev 21)
00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Active Management Technology - SOL (rev 21)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 21)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #2 (rev f1)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #4 (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 21)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21)
00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection I219-LM (rev 21)
01:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS522A PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8260 (rev 3a)
It turns out the sound is also not working. I did not realize that until now.