DOWST.DEV

October 25, 2019

Announcements!

PowerShell 7 Preview 5 – Released! (devblogs.microsoft.com)
Today we shipped PowerShell 7 Preview5! This release contains a number of new features and many bug

fixes from both the community as well as the PowerShell team. See the Release Notes for all the details of what is included in this release.

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By: Steve Lee submitted:Jun 15 2022

Blogs, Articles, and Posts

Copy multi-valued Active Directory attributes from one user to another with PowerShell (devblogs.microsoft.com)
Using -Replace parameter with Set-ADUser to copy Active Directory multi-valued attributes
By: Dr Scripto (MSFT Scripting Guys) submitted:Jun 15 2022

Encrypting Text (Part 1) (community.idera.com)
Let's take a look at a safe way of encrypting text on a computer. The below Protect-Text function

takes any text and encrypts it automatically, no password needed. Instead of a password, it uses either your user account and machine, or just your machine as a secret.

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By: Stephane van Gulick submitted:Jun 15 2022

Encrypting Text (Part 2) (community.idera.com)
This is the second part of our text encryption/decryption series. In the first part you learned how

you can safely encrypt text on a machine. Now let's take a look at the decrypting part.

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By: Stephane van Gulick submitted:Jun 15 2022

Force Intune policy sync from a PowerShell script (scconfigmgr.com)
Ever wondered how you can kick off a manual or automatic sync of your Intune policies from a

PowerShell script?

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By: Michael Mardahl submitted:Jun 15 2022

How to refresh Power BI Dataflows with PowerShell (craigporteous.com)
With the introduction of Power BI Dataflows in April 2019 the ability to interrogate this new

feature using the REST API landed soon after (unlike this blog post!). Like datasets, you can refresh your dataflows using the API.

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By: Craig Porteous submitted:Jun 15 2022

How to Scan Open Ports Within a Network (techcommunity.microsoft.com)
Network complexity is rapidly increasing with the addition of non-traditional devices gaining access

to organizational networks. Singular purpose devices made available through the Internet of Things (IoT) offering has increased network complexity even further with the ease of adding said devices to the network and sometimes without the knowledge of a system administrator. Hence the following received question: "How do I ensure all the appropriate ports are closed with all these devices being added to my network?"

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By: Anthony Bartolo submitted:Jun 15 2022

PowerShell, Files and Azure Storage Account Blobs (dev.to)
Azure Storage Blob is a cost-effective solution to store any kind of file in the cloud. It's secure,

reliable and resilient. More, Blob can be used as a trigger for Azure Functions when you add a file and you can play with different pricing tiers.

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By: Olivier Miossec submitted:Jun 15 2022

Why and how to connect to Microsoft Azure with Azure PowerShell (ehikioya.com)
When I first started working with Microsoft Azure Infrastructure services, I managed cloud resources

exclusively using the Azure portal/dashboard. And since I could do pretty much everything I needed to do directly on the portal, I never bothered with Azure PowerShell or any of the other methods of communicating with Azure.

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By: Ehi Kioya submitted:Jun 15 2022

Projects, Scripts, and Modules

Evergreen: A PowerShell module to return the latest version software and download links for various software (github.com)
A PowerShell module to return the latest version software and download links for various software
By: Aaron Parker submitted:Jun 15 2022

WINspect: PowerShell-based Windows Security Auditing Toolbox (github.com)
WINspect is part of a larger project for auditing different areas of Windows environments. It

focuses on enumerating different parts of a Windows machine to identify security weaknesses and point to components that need further hardening.

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By: A-mIn3 submitted:Jun 15 2022

Books, Media, and Learning Resources

100 Days of Infrastructure as Code in Azure (github.com)
Software developers first came up with the idea of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to address the

problems with manual or manually executed script deployments to servers. The proliferation of public cloud and the perception of unlimited scale and instant availability only calls greater attention to the issues of slow, unreliable deployment. Infrastructure as Code ultimately offers more stable environments at a rapid pace and high scale.

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By: Pete Zerger submitted:Jun 15 2022

Episode 022 – PowerShell at Microsoft Ignite (powershellnews.podbean.com)
In this episode, we discuss the sessions at Microsoft Ignite that pertain to PowerShell. We also

give some tips on going to Ignite.

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By: The PowerShell News Podcast submitted:Jun 15 2022

Fun

A PowerShell Cross-Platform Challenge (ironscripter.us)
As PowerShell 7 draws near, built on the successes of PowerShell Core, you will be asked to create

PowerShell tools that work cross-platform. Or you may be asked to create a PowerShell tool to run on a non-Windows platform. Your command should still be centered on writing objects to the pipeline. Even if the source material is all text.

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By: Iron Scripter submitted:Jun 15 2022

Do you have a suggestion for PowerShell Weekly? Do you know something that should be included? Let me know in the comments below, or on
twitter.

October 18, 2019

Announcements!

Coming in PowerShell7 Preview5 null-coalescing operators (twitter.com)
Coming in #PowerShell7 Preview5 (next week!) is the new Experimental null-coalescing operators. This

makes it more terse when taking action depending if something is $null or not.

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By: Steve Lee submitted:Jun 15 2022

Blogs, Articles, and Posts

Convert JSON array object to String in PowerShell (stackoverflow.com)
The following question was asked and answered on StackOverflow: I need to convert the Tags array

into a comma-separated string [and replace the array with the converted string in the JSON file]. I have tried converting from JSON, but I am struggling to convert the array into string in a clean way.

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By: submitted:Jun 15 2022

Discover Who Creates Guest Accounts in Office 365 Applications (petri.com)
At a recent conference, a discussion took place about the number of guest user accounts now being

created by applications in the directories of Office 365 tenants. The accounts are created through Azure B2B collaboration (by applications that generate invitations to join Office 365 Groups, like Teams and Planner) or SharePoint sharing invitations for documents or folders. It's one thing to invite people outside your tenant to collaborate; it's a horse of a different color to manage the resulting guest accounts.

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By: Tony Redmond submitted:Jun 15 2022

How to Copy files from Windows to Linux using PowerShell Remoting (techcommunity.microsoft.com)
With the release PowerShell Core 6, the PowerShell Team brought PowerShell to other platforms like

Linux and macOS. This new cross-platform approach allows users to take advantage of some pretty cool features. In this blog post, I am quickly going to show you, how you can use PowerShell Remoting to copy files from Windows to Linux systems.

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By: Thomas Maurer submitted:Jun 15 2022

List and change BIOS settings with PowerShell (systanddeploy.com)
In this post I will show you how to list and change BIOS settings for HP, Dell and Lenovo with

PowerShell only.

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By: Damien Van Robaeys submitted:Jun 15 2022

PowerShell and Secure Strings (red-gate.com)
Greg Moore demonstrates how to work with the Get-Credential PowerShell cmdlet and secure strings

when authenticating to an SFTP server.

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By: Greg Moore submitted:Jun 15 2022

PowerShell ValidateScript: Building Better Functions (adamtheautomator.com)
When creating PowerShell functions, validating input to parameters is important. Parameter

validation allows you to limit what is passed to functions. In this article, you're going to learn how to catch problems before they become one with the PowerShell ValidateScript validation attribute.

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By: June Castillote submitted:Jun 15 2022

ScreenMe: PowerShell tool to make screenshot under PE (systanddeploy.com)
In this post I will show you a little PowerShell tool I created that allows you to make a full

screen screenshot tat can be used both on Windows and on Windows PE.

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By: Damien Van Robaeys submitted:Jun 15 2022

The future of PowerShell begins to sharpen in focus (searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com)
PowerShell's promise as a cross-platform management tool has come a long way, but much work still

needs to be done for both Linux and Windows admins to pick up adoption.

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By: Tom Walat submitted:Jun 15 2022

Projects, Scripts, and Modules

AzViz: PowerShell based Azure Network Topology Visualizer (github.com)
PowerShell Module that can generate a topology diagram to Visualize Azure Network Topology and ARM

templates (WIP). It has capabilities to insert appropriate Azure Icons depending upon the type of the Azure Resource you have in your Resource Group, like Virtual Machine, Virtual Network, Subnet etc.

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By: Prateek Singh submitted:Jun 15 2022

PSNow (powershellgallery.com)
As a tool for making modules, PSNow emits the entire framework you need to create, analyze, test,

sign, build, deploy and publish your code with one module. All you need to do is run one command and then write your code. If you're new to PowerShell and not sure how to get going with a module, start here. If you've been writing code for a while and want to do more automation, PSNow is a great fit. It runs on PS Core 6.x and Windows PowerShell running on OSX, Linux and Windows.

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By: John McCrae submitted:Jun 15 2022

Books, Media, and Learning Resources

11 Best PowerShell Courses (blog.coursesity.com)
The best Powershell online courses & Tutorials to Learn Powershell for beginners to advanced level.
By: submitted:Jun 15 2022

E?v?e?r?y?t?h?i?n?g Things You Want to Know About PowerShell, But Are Too Afraid To Ask (youtube.com)
A great webcast covering a bunch of different PowerShell topics. Everyone from the novice to expert

can learn something from this video.

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By: submitted:Jun 15 2022

Do you have a suggestion for PowerShell Weekly? Do you know something that should be included? Let me know in the comments below, or on
twitter.

October 11, 2019

Blogs, Articles, and Posts

11 Ways to Create HashTable in PowerShell (ridicurious.com)
PowerShell Hashtables are compact data structures, which are very popular and come handy in a lot of

use cases. They are capable to store one or more Key-Value pairs and today we are going to looking into various approaches and methods to create a Hashtable in PowerShell.

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By: Prateek Singh submitted:Jun 15 2022

Get-Help Episode 021 (powershellnews.podbean.com)
This episode was recorded at the PowerShell on the River event. It is a sitdown interview with David

Littlejohn and James Petty. We discuss the speakers and topics at the event, while also talking about future PowerShell events across the country. We also discuss the OnRamp program and its value to both the industry and the students.

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By: submitted:Jun 15 2022

Making Sense of Parallel ForEach-Object in PowerShell 7 (jdhitsolutions.com)
By, you've most likely heard about the new -parallel parameter with ForEach-Object in the latest

preview of PowerShell 7 Personally. I've been waiting for this for a long time. I used to only use PowerShell workflows because it offered a way to run commands in parallel. Having this feature as part of the language is a welcome addition.

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By: Jeff Hicks submitted:Jun 15 2022

Uninstalling windows store apps using PowerShell (cloudappie.nl)
Recently I had to re-install my laptop. Now that shouldn't take to long, but it turned out I had

tweaked my previous install a bit. One of the things you get when installing Windows again is a bunch of default apps. These apps are coming from the Microsoft Store. And not all of these apps will be used, so I decided to figure out how to de-install them.

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By: Albert-Jan Schot submitted:Jun 15 2022

Projects, Scripts, and Modules

PSScriptMenuGui (github.com)
This module uses a CSV file to make a graphical menu of PowerShell scripts.
By: Dan O'Sullivan submitted:Jun 15 2022

PSSecTools/ADSec: Tools for Active Directory security management (github.com)
The ADSec powershell module is a toolkit designed to help with several core Active Directory

security concerns. Delegation & Revocation of privileges. Configuring monitoring of active directory object changes. Analysis of security relevant AD configuration settings/state.

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By: Friedrich Weinmann submitted:Jun 15 2022

The only PowerShell Command you will ever need to find out who did what in Active Directory (reddit.com)
The title pretty much sums it up.
By: MadBoyEvo submitted:Jun 15 2022

Books, Media, and Learning Resources

Gathering AD Data with the Active Directory PowerShell Module – Active Directory Security (adsecurity.org)
A great primer on getting started with the Active Directory PowerShell module.
By: Sean Metcalf submitted:Jun 15 2022

Practical PowerShell Security and Compliance Center (amazon.com)
PowerShell is an integral part of Office 365. This book was written with real world scenarios in

mind. Authored by a seven year Office 365 MVP, this book will provide you with practical advice on how to use PowerShell to manage the Security and Compliance Center.

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By: Damian Scoles submitted:Jun 15 2022

TheShow.E7.Azure Guest Configuration (DSC) (youtube.com)
This week dive into Guest Configuration with Michael Greene as he shows us a new incredible way to

validate settings inside your virtual machines including Operating Systems, applications and more!

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By: Jason Helmick submitted:Jun 15 2022

Fun

A PowerShell Cross-Platform Challenge – Iron Scripter (ironscripter.us)
New from the IronScripter Chaiman: A PowerShell Cross-Platform Challenge
By: submitted:Jun 15 2022

Examples every time (reddit.com)

By: Kershek submitted:Jun 15 2022

Do you have a suggestion for PowerShell Weekly? Do you know something that should be included? Let me know in the comments below, or on
twitter.

October 4, 2019

Announcements!

PowerShell 7 Preview 4 (devblogs.microsoft.com)
We continue to make progress towards our PowerShell 7 release which currently is targeting December

2019 for a Release Candidate and January 2020 for General Availability and will be our first LTS (Long Term Servicing) release!

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By: Steve Lee submitted:Jun 15 2022

The PowerShell Conference Book Volume 2 (leanpub.com)
Over thirty subject matter experts have teamed up to bring you the ultimate collection of PowerShell

topics that's designed to be like a conference in a book. This book not only delivers top-notch content that rivals any book on the market, but all royalties are donated to the OnRamp scholarship program which bootstraps others into the industry....

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By: Michael T Lombardi and Mark Kraus submitted:Jun 15 2022

Blogs, Articles, and Posts

Automating Azure Usage Reports with PowerShell (adamtheautomator.com)
One of the most important aspects of running workloads in Azure is keeping track of expenses. How

you do that is through tracking resource usage with an Azure usage report. In this article, you?ll learn how to create a PowerShell script to easily query resource usage across all of your Azure resources by date.

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By: June Castillote submitted:Jun 15 2022

Building an Active Directory Health Check Tool (adamtheautomator.com)
If you use, Active Directory (AD), it is probably the most important system you've got. Without it,

users can't login, they probably can't browse the web, machines can't communicate and finance won't be able to generate their latest report. Be sure you keep AD in tip top shape with an Active Directory health check script!

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By: Alex Asplund submitted:Jun 15 2022

Diagramming Networks and Systems with PowerShell (reddit.com)
Diagramming simple and more advanced networks/systems with images/shapes/icons.
By: u/MadBoyEvo submitted:Jun 15 2022

Documenting with PowerShell Chapter 5: File share permissions (cyberdrain.com)
Today I?ll be showing you how to upload permissions to IT-Glue using the IT-Glue API and the

NTFSSecurity module. We?;ll also have a generic non-ITGlue version you can use with whatever documentation system you use.

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By: Kelvin Tegelaar submitted:Jun 15 2022

How Scopes Work in PowerShell (adamtheautomator.com)
When you write a PowerShell script with no functions and no external dependencies on other scripts,

the concept of PowerShell scopes isn?t of much concern. But as you begin to build functions, modules and learn to call scripts from other scripts, the topic becomes more important.

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By: Tyler Muir submitted:Jun 15 2022

How to use PowerShell with Visual Studio Code like a Pro (dev.to)
Whether you're a developer or an it pro, you definitely have to deal with Powershell sometimes. For

several year I used to develop PowerShell script into PowerShell ISE. It worked very well, but it looked like "old". Since many years, almost four, I started using Visual Studio Code to edit every kind of files, including PowerShell files. The reason is really simple: Visual Studio Code is more powerful than PowerShell IDE. I show you the reason why.

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By: Emanuele Bartolesi submitted:Jun 15 2022

Integrate Linux Commands into Windows with PowerShell and the Windows Subsystem for Linux (devblogs.microsoft.com)
A common question Windows developers have is ?why doesn?t Windows have yet??. Whether longing for a

powerful pager like less or wanting to use familiar commands like grep or sed, Windows developers desire easy access to these commands as part of their core workflow.

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By: Mike Battista submitted:Jun 15 2022

Join Linux to Active Directory with PowerShell Core (winsysblog.com)
PowerShell Core is now generally available, which means you can now start running it on your

production servers and not feel guilty! There are many possibilities for using PowerShell on non-Windows platforms now and today my mind was pondering how to use it to join Linux servers to Active Directory. So, I created a small little function that automates some of this called Join-LinuxToAD. Keep in mind I tested this only on CentOS 7.

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By: Dan Franciscus submitted:Jun 15 2022

Step-by-Step Guide to Encrypt Azure Linux VM (rebeladmin.com)
Disk encryption is a basic data protection method for physical & virtual hard disks. Similarly, we

also can encrypt Azure Linux VM by using Azure Key Vault & dm-crypt. In this post, I am going to demonstrate how we can encrypt Azure Linux VM.

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By: Dishan M. Francis submitted:Jun 15 2022

The classy way to complete and validate PowerShell Parameters (jamesone111.wordpress.com)
Do you ever wonder why PowerShell parameters are written the way they are? For example, when saying

a parameter may have a value of null why does the attribute need to be written [AllowNull()] with an empty () ?

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By: James O'Neill submitted:Jun 15 2022

Today’s lesson on RegEx complexity (reddit.com)
RegEx will let you be as complex as you want. ALWAYS focus on making your searches concise. If its

getting hairy, look for another way to describe what you are after. That will guide you down the road of RegEx enlightenment.

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By: u/Szeraax submitted:Jun 15 2022

Understanding NewtonSoft in PowerShell (stackoverflow.com)
A great primer on using JSON and NewtonSoft in PowerShell
By: submitted:Jun 15 2022

Using Azure Key Vault for local administrator password rotation (powershell.no)
In this article, we are going to see how we can leverage Azure Key Vault for storing local

administrator passwords configured on Windows Servers. Before we get started, let us have a quick overview of what Azure Key Vault is.

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By: Jan Egil Ring submitted:Jun 15 2022

Using PowerShell to View and Remove Wireless Profiles in Windows 10 (devblogs.microsoft.com)
Using PowerShell and Regular Expressions as a wrapper on NetSh.exe output to identify the profiles.
By: Dr Scripto submitted:Jun 15 2022

Where did that download come from? (guyrleech.wordpress.com)
I was investigating something completely unrelated recently when I came across the fact that the

Zone.Identifier information for downloaded files, on Windows 10, which is stored in NTFS Alternate Data Streams (ADS) on each downloaded file, contains the URL from which the file came. Yes, the whole URL so could potentially be very useful and/or very embarrassing. It's this Zone.Identifier file that Windows Explorer checks when it puts restrictions on files that it deems could be unsafe because they have come from the internet zone.

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By: Guy Leech submitted:Jun 15 2022

Projects, Scripts, and Modules

Update-ADPassword.ps1 (gist.github.com)
Want to change your Active Directory account password without switching to the lock screen?
By: Mathias Jessen submitted:Jun 15 2022

Books, Media, and Learning Resources

Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, Linux and macOS Edition (manning.com)
Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, Linux and macOS Edition is a task-focused tutorial for

administering Linux and macOS systems using Microsoft PowerShell. Adapted by PowerShell team members Travis Plunk and Tyler Leonhardt from the bestselling Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches by community legends Don Jones and Jeffrey Hicks, it features Linux-based examples covering core language features and admin tasks. Designed for busy IT professionals, this innovative guide will take you from the basics to PowerShell proficiency through 25 tutorials you can do in your lunch break.

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By: Travis Plunk and Tyler Leonhardt submitted:Jun 15 2022

PowerShell Tips Poster (systemfrontier.com)
Looking for some great tips on writing better PowerShell? Here?s a poster that you can use as a

quick reference online or on your cube or office wall.

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By: Jay Adams submitted:Jun 15 2022

PSAtlas, an interactive PowerShell learning framework (github.com)
PSAtlas is an interactive PowerShell learning framework. PSAtlas is all about gaining/sharing

expirience. Provide or receive guidance on different Powershell topics. PSAtlas is a community driven, interactive knowledgebase of PowerShell.

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By: Kevin Bates submitted:Jun 15 2022

Fun

A Module to Download Depressing Lock Screen Images (reddit.com)
User u/_stib_ on Reddit made a module to download depressing lock screen images fresh every day, and

it's now available on the PowerShell gallery.

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By: u/_stib_ submitted:Jun 15 2022

Installing PowerShell Core on Raspbian (Raspberry Pi) (geektechstuff.com)
PowerShell Core is a version of PowerShell that can be installed on Windows, Mac OS X (I covered it

here) and Linux, i.e. Raspbian. For this blog post I am going to using my Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspbian (Buster).

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By: GeekDude submitted:Jun 15 2022

PowerShell Based Jeopardy Buzzers (reddit.com)
We're hosting a 90's theme party on Saturday, and I absolutely loathe the plastic buzzers included

with the Jeopardy "board game". The solution? 25 lines of PowerShell using PowerShell UniversalDashboard, that allows our contestants to use their phones as buzzers.

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By: submitted:Jun 15 2022

Do you have a suggestion for PowerShell Weekly? Do you know something that should be included? Let me know in the comments below, or on
twitter.

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