saw this one making the rounds the other day, I think it’s quite fitting https://twitter.com/SaeedDiCaprio/status/1750152798623195473

do not use other genocides to describe this one

they settled on that in 2014 so seems unlikely

Epicurious put out a fun video last week having a few chefs compare boxed mac and cheese products. You might find it interesting https://youtu.be/uambW2W6zmQ

Garbage bags. I don’t particularly care WHICH brand, but I won’t do generic. The consequences if the bag rips open are horrifying.

This isn’t even new. Why are we posting things from over two years ago and treating it like some sort of revelation?

There are different solutions depending on the scale and scope.

At the minimum, you can look at just modifying the unattend.xml file to automate a USB install. This will give some simple features like configuring licensing and generally being able to skip the oobe (out of box experience) wizard.

Next level up is modifying the install.wim file on that USB install. This will afford some more customisability like taking a sysprepped captured image, like what you’re describing. You don’t need a WDS server for this, but if you’re going this deep you might as well move up to one for the automation it brings to that captured image workflow.

Next level up is setting up a WDS (Windows Deployment Services) server, which can just be a dedicated VM or a dedicated physical machine somewhere on the network. This has all the benefits of the above but with better automation and network booting (which replaces your USB with just needing a network connection) and automatic AD join.

At the top of those enterprise scale solutions is SCCM (now called MECM) or InTune, depending how you want to work things. Setting up one of these is probably way beyond your scope though.

Things get more complicated the further up you go, but come with more benefits. If you’re looking for a minimum effort solution, I’d just build a bootable USB with rufus and modify the unattend.xml, save that file somewhere so you don’t have to do it again and just copy it onto any new drive you build.

I might be forgetting something so hopefully something in the comments here helps you in your current situation. cheers

I totally agree. I wasn’t decided on quitting Reddit just because of the 3rd party apps fiasco, but the overall quality of the content took a nosedive which only further reinforced my decision to uninstall Relay once the subs finally came.

At a cost of free it was still like of worth checking out but not if I have to pay.

Former Relay user here.

Willing to bet the comments in that thread are positive because survivorship bias, at least in part. Folks like me who deleted the app probably wouldn’t have commented, after all. I’m also sure I wasn’t the only one to see the subscription prompt come up and just delete the app.

knew it was coming and decided ahead of time that when I was forced to pay, I’d just delete the app.

Ars and Reddit are under the same parent company, conde nast or however that’s all structured. I also have noticed ars seems to write very frequently about Reddit, even if it is usually in a critical light.

I get mixed feelings about articles like this one.