The year-end electric power report from the Energy Information Administration showed overall generation fell by 1.5 percent in 2017, but different power sources experienced different changes in use.

Natural gas experienced a relatively steep decline of 7.7 percent last year, with coal generation falling 2.5 percent. Natural gas remained the most-used fuel source for the third year in a row, though its biggest annual decline on record significantly narrowed the gap with coal. Additionally, 2017 was the first year since 2009 that both natural gas and coal-fired generation fell in the same year.

Coal accounted for more than half of the electric capacity retired in 2017, with 6.3 GW of the 1.2 GW total. For the first year in at least a decade, no new coal-fired generators were added.

Though 4 GW of natural gas capacity was retired, 9.3 GW of new natural gas came online during 2017, with 8.2 GW of the total consisting of combined-cycle units.

At the same time, wind generation grew 12 percent and solar generation increased 46.9 percent. Now, wind made up of 6.3 percent of total net generation and solar reached 1.3 percent. Nearly 6.3 GW of wind turbines and 4.7 percent of solar systems were added in 2017

Hydroelectricity had another strong year, reaching 7.5 percent of total generation thanks to record precipitation in California.

Nuclear generation held nearly steady, falling by 0.1 percent.

For more details: Generation from Gas, Coal Fell in 2017 as Renewables Rose - Power Engineering

Data sovereignty is the concept that information which has been converted and stored in binary digital form is subject to the laws of the country in which it is located.

Many of the current concerns that surround data sovereignty relate to enforcing privacy regulations and preventing data that is stored in a foreign country from being subpoenaed by the host country's government.

The wide-spread adoption of cloud computing services, as well as new approaches to data storage including object storage, have broken down traditional geopolitical barriers more than ever before. In response, many countries have regulated new compliance requirements by amending their current laws or enacting new legislation that requires customer data to be kept within the country the customer resides.

Verifying that data exists only at allowed locations can be difficult. It requires the cloud customer to trust that their cloud provider is completely honest and open about where their servers are hosted and adhere strictly to service level agreements (SLAs). 

Jan. 14, 2020 - Microsoft will retire Windows 7 from support, marking the general deadline for enterprises to replace that OS with Windows 10.

There will undoubtedly be laggards – as there were when Windows XP got the axe in April 2014 – and some companies will likely pay to extend support, assuming Microsoft offers what it calls "Premium Assurance" for Windows 7. Currently, Premium Assurance is limited to Windows Server and SQL Server licenses. But Microsoft has just announced that it offers "an option for an additional paid extension for eligible volume licensing customers" for "some versions" of Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education.

With that in place – and the strong likelihood that massive numbers of Windows 7 machines will still be in place at this date – Computerworld thinks it's inevitable that Microsoft will dangle a more-money-for-more-support deal in front of organizations unable to dump Windows 7 by the deadline.