I've had a moment of reckoning the other day: my Android phone is rather old by recent cool-ness standards: it's a Moto G5 plus, happily running Android 8.0. Ju

I've had a moment of reckoning the other day: my Android phone is rather old by recent cool-ness standards: it's a Moto G5 plus, happily running Android 8.0. Just in the past week, two of the apps I use have dropped the support of Android 8.0. I don't know what feature they decided take up on (the gain) by dropping support, or what load shed is, but I was not pleased that this has started happening. On the one hand, I'm rather relieved: I don't have to keep downloading the endless stream of "new" features that I don't want. More often than not, I've found the updates keep breaking something, or upset my established pattern of working. On the other hand, I'm facing the constant danger of some of the vital apps dropping support: for example, the work-related apps, without which I won't be able to log in remotely. I suppose there's the option of rooting and installing a custom ROM. But then, there's no guarantee that it'll continue to work as before, in all its full glory. It's also the case that some apps (especially the work-related ones) refuse to work on a rooted device. So, no matter how strongly I'm determined to stay put, I'll eventually be forced to get a new phone. I guess what I'm saying is that a modern devices are a complex ecosystem. Just having the right tools at hand, passing the right law, or having an open-source, DIY, path ahead doesn't necessarily mean that things will be same as before. For some things, we are necessarily dependent on other people doing the right things--and some of those things, nobody can force them to do it.