[JoeMamaAME]

Windows Ameliorated does not require installing from an ISO. That was merely made for convenience, and for those without the basic technical knowledge required to perform a manual amelioration. There is detailed documentation for performing a manual amelioration, it uses fully open-source scripts, and is legal if you use a license key before running the scripts. (https://wiki.ameliorated.info/doku.php?id=documentation_21h1)

I do agree removing Windows Update does pose some security risk, however I don't think said risk is nearly as bad as some make it out to be, and I personally think the benefits of Windows Ameliorated greatly outweigh any security downsides.

Also, AME does greatly help to mitigate the attack surface of Windows:

Windows Ameliorated ships with a non-administrator user account by default, which mitigates ~70% of Windows vulnerabilities. (Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210618023509/https://www.beyon...). Of course you can still do admin actions, it just requires the admin password.