I recommend these https://kodiakshaving.com/products/gem-platinum-diamond-glide-de-blade?variant=52423791608175

Kodiak Shaving is run by a really nice guy. The "Personna" branding is a bit of a mess. Even since I've started wetshaving (7 years ago) there has been a flurry of changes with the branding.

The blades you liked were most likely colloquially known as "Personna Lab Blue" which say "Comfort Coated" on the box and "Super" printed on the blades. You can still get them here https://kodiakshaving.com/products/personna-double-edge-blades?variant=52331003969903.

I personally like both blades. Some people think they're the same (they do come from the same factory in the USA) just in different packaging, but I've found the GEM branded ones slightly smoother. Every face is different, though.

I don't know what your price limit is, but I think $16-$18 is a good deal for 100 blades ($20 with shipping, of course).

Does anyone here have a good shave with astra blades? What’s your routine?

I use Astra blades. I only use each blade for two shaves though, otherwise they get too dull for me. I use Taylor of Old Bond Street shaving cream with a brush and lather bowl. The 150g/5.3oz shaving cream lasts me about 300 shaves.

Thanks for the advice. It’s a bit much for me to store blades outside the bathroom. I wouldn’t mind doing that on in mounted blades, but it’s a bridge too far on mounted ones. I think I’ll just have to pay attention to the kind of steel.

My go to is Tiger Platinum blades from Czechia. They can be had pretty cheap and they're made in the factory that used to make the Astra blades before Gillette moved production to Russia.

I honestly don't know how cheap they are now, but I bought a 100 pack of Derby Extra in June 2021 and still have a bunch. They give a smooth, close shave and seem to last a while. I also haven't fully shaved in a couple years, so that's why I have so many left.

From what I understand your Astra blades don't fair well when used with water, making me think that they are not as stainless as your older ones. If they are damp they can rust ever so slightly on the apex and you will feel that. This goes for any blade but: make sure to dry them well before storing away. Store blades and razors outside the bathroom. In the humid months (right now) I take a hair dryer to my straight razors even after drying with a towel and paper. You can try and strop them on your jeans quickly before shaving as well. All small things but together it can really help make your edge/blade last longer. I only use straights so I don't have a blade recommendation unfortunately.

Voskov are hidden gems; maybe my favorite, above anyþing else except possibly Feather.

Oh, I won't say þey're þe most durable. I don't hypermile my blades. Maybe you could stretch þeir life; oþer brands I've used stay sharp longer. But Voskov come wiþ great edges and are really cheap.

You can get þem elsewhere; it doesn't have to be Amazon. It was just an easy link.

@otter@lemmy.ca @hal@piefed.nz thanks for the encouragement to try Anubis.

The instance is now running using the Ansible playbook, with Anubis enabled. I changed the server back to non-private (which didn't help, anyway).

I've been interested in switching to running Lemmy via the Ansible playbook for a long time, but now that I've done it I miss "my way"! I'll either have to go back to "my way" or fork the playbook and learn how to make ansible do things how I like it.

Mostly, I need to figure out how to have everything go through Nginx Proxy Manager instead of the built in nginx container. I like having everything on an nginx docker network so they can use hostnames to find each other instead of IP addresses.

dbzer0 is using haproxy with haphash successfully to mitigate.

https://github.com/dgl/haphash

He might be willing to share the uri/paths to approve in your proxy config to deploy haphash or anubis etc.

I'd have to sit down and figure that all out. It'd be a good skill to have these days.

I had some challenges setting it up which were mostly related to using load balancing for Lemmy-UI. In general there isn't much of a problem letting humans through so long as you only apply it to the front end UI not to the API.

We have a rule to allow anyone with a jwt set which means logged in users are not challenged.

Finding an instance that blocks content from logged out users would likely put off new users, but if you're not looking for new users then requiring login seems like an easy solution to the problem.

Another vote here for anubis! It cut our traffic down by some 75% or so.

I've heard mostly good things about Anubis, but I've also heard it can be hard to get it right. I've never looked into it so I'm not sure what people are referring to... maybe the balance between blocking lots of bots but still letting humans through?

This Lemmy instance is mostly sticking around for posterity, so hopefully Private Instance cuts down on the B.S. so I don't have to think about it any further!

Do you want to give Anubis a try? That has helped our instances avoid the bots