• The unfortunately named Paris Buttfield-Addison bought a $500 Apple gift card at a major Australian brick-and-mortar outlet.
  
  Turns out the card had already been redeemed, and when he tried to redeem it, it was rejected.
  
  The outlet agreed to provide a replacement gift card, so all was well.
  
  Then Apple terminated his account and bricked all of his devices.  (Hey.Paris)

  My Apple ID, which I have held for around 25 years (it was originally a username, before they had to be email addresses; it’s from the iTools era), has been permanently disabled.  This isn't just an email address; it is my core digital identity.  It holds terabytes of family photos, my entire message history, and is the key to syncing my work across the ecosystem.
  
  I effectively have over $30,000 worth of previously-active "bricked" hardware.  My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly.  I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media.

  You might be thinking at this point that this guy is an idiot for giving a single company complete control over his personal and work life in this way.
  
  You would be correct.

• Apple is not a computer company.  (Thurrott)
  
  It's a protection racket.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant doesn't work even in the company's own ads where the responses are fake.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  That would be embarrassing if Microsoft still had the capacity to feel embarrassment.
  
  
  
• Intel looks set to release a big Battlemage.  (WCCFTech)
  
  This will be about 60% than the current B580, which is a fairly decent value at $250 since it offers 12GB of RAM.  The new card will have 16GB of RAM.
  
  Price and release dates are left to be generated by some random LLM somewhere.
  
  
  
• TikTok has agreed to be sold to a US-led investment consortium.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The parent company, ByteDance, will retain a 20% stake in the new join venture.
  
  From the details given, 35% of the shares are unaccounted for.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Kiryu Coco of Hololive's Gen 4 invited Haachama of Gen 1 for a sleepover.  Alcohol may have been consumed.  The result was an epic karaoke session.