Gee, what would lead anyone think they were capable of doing such a thing?

I understand that we have had some very serious fires in buildings that use wood, too.
Can you explain to us why we don't stop completely using wood as well?
By your logic, any use of wood for anything after the 1666 Great Fire of London was pure idiocy
Concrete and steel should have been banned after the 9/11 building collapses, as those proved unsafe to you as well I suppose?

Bamboo engineered materials are superior to almost anything else we currently use for certain applications.
I spec laminated bamboo structural panels for designs requiring better strength, dimensional stability and vibrational attenuation than current engineered wood products
It even exceeds some traditional metal structural elements in certain applications.
It also costs about 3x as much as other wood for the panels I use, so no one uses it for cost savings. But it does justify that cost with a lot of extra value.
Bamboo does happen to also grow in China, like it does in much of the world, but that does not justify your blind bigotry and racism against a building material.
Seriously? Racism, against plants that happen to grow near by people you don't like? You must be very intelligent.

I am disappoint

Large industrial machines have an EOL measured in decades. You do not replace a lathe the size of a bus or a container ship because a Windows version changed
I have to maintain a variety of air-gapped boxes that run win 7, and two even still on XP.
After that date, manufacturers got smart and most everyone shipped Linux based control systems, but it took them a while, and still to this day not everyone has.
They are going to have to have some way to allow new installations of legacy versions.
 

Now try fixing it for the thousands of people who are not famous Apple Developers with C-level execs on speed dial

Apple Gift Card fraud is a well known issue. Even the official response from Apple implied the entire supply chain was compromised.
There are no surprises here, this is not an uncommon occurrence, and this instance of it is well documented.
There is nothing here that "doesn't add up" other than your personal discomfort at anyone questioning the sacred Apple. Apple is Mother. Apple is father.

The lesson is don't ever use an ecosystem where all your software, music, and book purchases, your hardware itself, and even your access to your professional life, tools, and means of communication can all be erased instantly with zero recourse.
The lesson here is not "avoid Apple gift cards"
Its "avoid Apple"

They can make an exception for him because he is such a big player. They can make an exception for him because he went viral.
  The thousands of others this happens to on a regular basis are still locked out, and no one is coming to save them.
   

I am betting the people that wrote this law expect just that to happen.
Because the way they wrote the law they now have a pretense for banning VPN's as a criminal circumvention tool.
Which may have been the idea all along.
Those pitching VPN bans all along could not get traction before, but now they have both a legal justification and a "think of the children" pretense to leverage

Start of first shift in St Petersburg I see

I wonder how many of those Porches (and Mercedes and others) were stolen from Ukrainian dealerships in the first place.
  Personally knowing medics in Ukraine that have to use modified secondhand family vans because the Russians looted all the ambulances and cleaned out the car dealerships, I have to say "So what?"
Brick them all.
   

I would imagine that it is because you would then very likely have a cooking surface

What is important to note is that Kapoor didn't patent Vantablack. That would imply actually creating something.
No, he simply licensed the patent. Then wrote the TOS to state he, personally, was the only person who could ever use it.
Which is why, famously, he is sometimes excluded by name in other peoples TOS.

I think all open source licenses, of every sort, for anything, forever, should ban Anish Kapoor by name. Even long after he is gone.
Just because he deserves to be an object lesson to others, for as long as human records exist