I don’t understand why Nadella hates windows so much.
But for most home users, it's not a big deal. I imagine 99% of home users are behind a NAT, and being behind NAT means external attackers aren't going to be able to connect to your machine and run remote exploits (ie, EternalBlue). The only way to get compromised is to get trojaned, in which case a Windows update wasn't going to save you anyways. At best, it means a trojan might have a slightly harder time escalating to Admin/SYSTEM without getting caught, but a trojan doesn't need Administrator permissions to ransomware your Documents folder or add your machine to a botnet.
As long as your browser is up to date, you'll be fine.
Hitting default gateways for web admin panels etc.
I found the solution for Windows update though.Just don't use Windows. Microsoft can't be trusted.
That was always the problem with Microsoft: testing was done by the user. But until Win 7 they seem to have released the latest service pack for a given version (2k, XP, 7) with mostly bug fixes. Nowadays in Win 10 and 11 they bundle security updates with features and bugs go unfixed for months, if they ever are fixed. Microsoft organization, from quality perspective, is broken.
That said, I also hate Windows updates, and especially the way Windows handles them. LTSC is also my way to avoid some of it, especially the ""feature"" updates. LTSC is something I also recommend, if people can manage an activation server, or I can point them to mine.
What protects you, I think, besides your undoubtedly good practices, is herd immunity. Most every other Win user is "vaccinated" with antivirus, and so malware authors are not keen to pick on vulns that would get their thing flagged anyways. The MS policy of including Defender for everyone raised the bar, basically.