Once upon a time there was discussion about the DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and how we need to move to a Canadian one. The one passed around was 149.112.121.30, CIRA (protected).

I had said something about going a step further and just using your own via Pi-Hole and Unbound. Someone I do not remember who as that is why I am posting here said yes but the pi still has the DNS server you set it up with, they said they would look into it further at a later date If they did look into it and post something I am truly sorry as I cannot find it.

I have gotten into using less US internet things and I recently got to find out that I needed to figure out my VPN setup a little better. This lead me into a deep valley of infosec and I am trying my darndest to strip things away. Anywho I was looking into something and there was mention of apps possibly falling back to system DNS so I found /etc/resolv.conf where I changed my DNS system on my 3 currently operational pi’s to access DNS like this.

Edit: I fixed some editing and hopefully made the commands more clear

This was bolded (I guess putting the comment marker first in the line makes it bold) but inside of the conf file at /etc/resolv.conf I changed it from,

Generated by NetworkManager

nameserver 9.9.9.9 To

Generated by NetworkManager

nameserver 172.16.1.50 # Primary Pi-hole

nameserver 172.16.1.52 # Secondary Pi-hole

nameserver 149.112.121.30 # Canadian DNS (CIRA Canadian Shield: Protected)

I also needed to add this to the end of /etc/unbound/unbound.conf.d/pi-hole.conf

This is for Canadian and psuedo-Canadian backups.

forward-zone:

name: "."

forward-addr: 149.112.121.10 # CIRA Canadian DNS

forward-addr: 9.9.9.10 # Quad9 Canadian (with filtering)

forward-first: no

I get into computer projects and find ways to one up myself, I wish I could say I crash tested everything the old fashioned way but I have used ChatGPT to crash test things. Only because I do not have a computer with a strong enough graphics card to run a local LLM and breaking one thing could set me back hours or even days.

So someone on here suggested calling Amazon and closing your prime account and getting your whole year back, $109 for me. So I got curious what other services have I just cancelled but maybe I could get money back, turns out if you call Disney+ they will cancel and refund your account I paid through Apple so they will have to do their thing first but hopefully I will get refunded for that. I saw that I was also paying for Trilogy+ but I have cancelled that and have asked Apple to refund that.

Then I thought about what other services have I forgotten about, or are just set to not renew. I had transferred my domain to hosthero so that I could get a .ca address so I thought maybe I should check out wordpress, it has been cancelled but after getting past the dumb artificial intelligence I got a full refund!

I should add this is an open letter for people to copy and send off their MP.