[{"content":"Hey there! It has been a while, and there have been significant changes in my life since my last update. To summarise, I sold everything, moved to a new country, started a new job, made new friends at the Toronto Public Library while I was looking for my first job in Canada, lived in a basement, moved to a new place with 2 dogs and 1 cat, visited Niagara Falls (basic), enjoyed a lot of hikes in -30°C weather, bought a car, shoveled a combined of 2+ metres of snow during winter 2025, visited my home country for a vacation, took selfies with a camel, turned 30, and I’m all set to move to a new place in Vaughan (no doxxing pls!😢); and begin a new job in the FinTech industry.\nObviously, to achieve all of the above, one thing was an absolute essential - a VPN (kidding, OK?). I’m not a big believer in using commercial VPN services (for various reasons but mainly privacy concerns), so I decided to build my own. I needed just three things: a VM running on a cloud provider (Oracle offers this with its always-free tier), a VPN server (WireGuard/IPsec), and a network-level adblocker (Pi-hole DNS).\nLaunching Your VM Sign up for OCI Free Tier (I prefer switching to Pay as you go because it gives you higher priority for ARM VMs - but they\u0026rsquo;re still free!) You only need a few things to get started. Try finding a guide on the internet but basically: A VCN (virtual cloud network) in your home region An instance (preferably Ampere-based, upto 4 OCPU and 32GB RAM is free with 10 TB bandwidth), use this script if you get an Out of Capacity error. Alternatively, you may get an Intel-based instance, which has a limited network throughput of 480 Mbps. And you will get half that, at best, because VPN is a two-way communication with the internet (also, the poor single CPU core will be busy juggling between encryption/decryption, DNS queries, etc). Make sure to choose the appropriate image based on CPU architecture. Intel is x64 (AMD64) and Ampere is aarch64 (ARM). Make sure you add a public SSH key during creation. A public IP address for your instance (IPv4) A security list on the public subnet to allow inbound traffic on port 51820 (WireGuard) and 500, 4500 (IPsec) and 22 (SSH) Feel free to write a terraform module for this if you want to automate the process. Oracle Cloud Create VM\nPublic Subnet Security List Ingress Rules\nInstalling Pi-hole and WireGuard/IPSec Generally, I\u0026rsquo;m not a huge fan of setup scripts, but considering Oracle can shut you down at any moment, this is more of a disposable setup. Run each command individually and verify what it is doing before moving to the next one. You may use a tutorial like this one .\n1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash pihole setpassword password #password for the web interface sudo iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT #Allow HTTP traffic to Pi-hole web interface iptables-save \u0026gt; /etc/iptables/rules.v4 #Persist the iptables configuration curl -L https://install.pivpn.io | bash reboot pihole -d #Run a debug check after the VM comes back up pivpn -d #Run a debug check for PiVPN, this should fix any iptables/sysctl issues wget https://get.vpnsetup.net -O vpn.sh \u0026amp;\u0026amp; sudo sh vpn.sh #Run this if you want to set up IKEv2/IPSec or skip if you\u0026#39;re happy with Wireguard #You should now be able to use the commands pivpn and pihole to manage your VPN and DNS server. root@freebiepn:/home/ubuntu# pivpn -h ::: Control all PiVPN specific functions! ::: ::: Usage: pivpn \u0026lt;command\u0026gt; [option] ::: ::: Commands: ::: -a, add Create a client conf profile ::: -c, clients List any connected clients to the server ::: -d, debug Start a debugging session if having trouble ::: -l, list List all clients ::: -qr, qrcode Show the qrcode of a client for use with the mobile app ::: -r, remove Remove a client ::: -off, off Disable a client ::: -on, on Enable a client ::: -h, help Show this help dialog ::: -u, uninstall Uninstall pivpn from your system! ::: -up, update Updates PiVPN Scripts ::: -bk, backup Backup VPN configs and user profiles root@freebiepn:/home/ubuntu# pivpn -a Enter the Client IP from range 10.201.44.2 - 10.201.44.254 (optional): ::: Chosen Client IP: 10.201.44.2 Enter a Name for the Client (default: \u0026#39;freebiepn\u0026#39;): [2026-04-07T20:57:24+0000]: ::: Name is blank. Defaulting to \u0026#39;freebiepn\u0026#39;. ::: Client Keys generated ::: Client config generated ::: Updated server config ::: Updated hosts file for Pi-hole ::: WireGuard reloaded ====================================================================== ::: Done! freebiepn.conf successfully created! ::: freebiepn.conf was copied to /home/opc/configs for easytransfer. ::: Please use this profile only on one device and create additional ::: profiles for other devices. You can also use pivpn -qr ::: to generate a QR Code you can scan with the mobile app. ====================================================================== Wireguard has clients for all platforms. You can install it on your device and use the config generated in /home/opc/configs to connect to your VPN.\nRefer this documentation if you want to manage IPSec users and this link to configure IPSec clients.\nLogin to the Pi-hole web interface at http://pi.hole/admin using the password you set earlier once you are connected to the VPN. Go to lists \u0026gt; delete all lists \u0026gt; Add blocklist https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists/main/adblock/pro.txt \u0026gt; Tools \u0026gt; Update Gravity (for some reason, the default list blocks legitimate websites for me).\nPi-hole Web Interface\nUse Cases and Gotchas I have used this setup during my trip to Dubai to do WhatsApp calls/videos (VoIP is blocked in the middle-east to support the oligopolistic telecom companies) I have used this setup to bypass content restrictions on airplane Viasat Wi-Fi (Netflix and video calls at 40,000 feet over an ocean FTW!) Blocks ads network wide! Keeps your internet traffic private until it reaches your VPN server which acts as an exit node I will be purchasing a portable-hardware travel router to maintain a persistent VPN connection while traveling Profit? Gotchas:\nASN number for Oracle Cloud is widely known and is classified as a \u0026ldquo;data center\u0026rdquo; ASN. This is used by some websites like Reddit to block traffic/bots. Keep a watch on your usage - if you have upgraded to Pay as you go, stick to the Always Free Limits . ","permalink":"https://aakarshit.ca/posts/setup-own-wireguard-ipsec-vpn-on-cloud-with-adblocking/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHey there!\u003c/strong\u003e It has been a while, and there have been significant changes in my life since my last update. To summarise, I sold everything, moved to a new country, started a new job, made new friends at the Toronto Public Library while I was looking for my first job in Canada, lived in a basement, moved to a new place with 2 dogs and 1 cat, visited Niagara Falls (basic), enjoyed a lot of hikes in -30°C weather, bought a car, shoveled a combined of 2+ metres of snow during winter 2025, visited my home country for a vacation, took selfies with a camel, turned 30, and I’m all set to move to a new place in Vaughan (no doxxing pls!😢); and begin a new job in the FinTech industry.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Setup Own WireGuard/IPsec VPN on Cloud with Adblocking"},{"content":"Philosophical Lecture In the last year and a half, I have travelled across 5 different countries:\n🇰🇿 Kazakhstan 🇯🇵 Japan 🇹🇭 Thailand 🇨🇦 Canada 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates Traveling is worth spending money on. You land in a new country, the weather is different, you don’t have the local currency (yet, unless you brought it with you), you gotta figure out how to get to your hotel and you don’t speak the language.\nIf you can figure all this out and have the time of your life, isn’t this a tremendous return on investment?\nThe key lies in the why and the how of your travels. Are you seeking mere distraction, a collection of souvenirs and social media posts? Travel, in this sense, becomes a form of existential exploration. It is a confrontation with your own freedom, mortality, and capacity for wonder.\nThe world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. ~Confucius\nIn late December 2023, I visited Kazakhstan for 7 days (specifically, Almaty city) and this post is about my travel experience. If you’ve ever felt the urge to experience something new, raw, and undiscovered by most, this Central Asian gem delivers.\n🇰🇿 Welcome to Almaty! I landed in Almaty and it was -9°C outside. The city looked beautiful (and frozen in time) out of the airplane window.\nThe first roadblock is getting a Cab to our Airbnb near Arbat Street. Yandex Go works like Uber in Almaty, but Visa/Mastercard payments do not work because of sanctions on Russia (Yandex is a Russian firm). You must withdraw cash from the airport (Tenge is the official currency). I always buy an eSIM before hand so data was a non-issue. Did my best to do a Google translation for the driver (Kazakh/Russian is universal, English - nope).\nIt might be worth noting that Kazakhstan was the last standing state in the USSR until its dissolution in 1991. Bit of history there, so you’ll see old Soviet blocs and influence everywhere!\nUpon reaching the Airbnb, I wanted to take it easy the first day. After some rest, I decided to head to Abay Avenue to visit one of the tour operators to get a ticket for a day tour to Charyn Canyon, Kolsai Lake, etc. The operator asked us to show up the next morning at 6 AM at some nearby address. In the evening, decided to eat at “Dodo’s Pizza” and take a stroll on Arbat Street later.\nCharyn Canyon \u0026amp; Kolsai Lake Charyn Canyon looked like a miniature Grand Canyon, with layers of red rock and snow-capped mountains. Despite the cold, the views were absolutely surreal. Kolsai Lake was frozen, but it was right out of a children\u0026rsquo;s storybook.\nOur tour was a group tour on a bus with 10 other people. The tour guide in the bus was fluent in Russian - so no hablo English.\nWas back in the city by the evening. Total distance travelled by bus: ~600 km.\nNo Agenda Following the pattern of go hard one day at a time and taking it easy the next one, the following day, I explored Panfilov Park, home to the Zenkov Cathedral. One thing I have learned from my cab rides in Almaty is that people love to talk to you, are warm, quite funny and they love music! Especially Peggy Gou . Since this was Christmas time, there were DJ booths set up throughout the city. Below is a photo of one near Kazakh Technical University.\nI wanted to head to a bar so I looked up events on Couchsurfing, went to a random one and met a fellow traveller from the Philippines.\nKok Tobe Kok Tobe is a mini amusement park that has an amazing view of the city.\nThere are some great rides like “Fast Coaster” at the top along with a few restaurants. Took the gondola back into Almaty as the sun dipped and landed at another “celebration square” for Christmas events.\nNo plans, again With no fixed plan the next day, I stumbled upon the Kazakhstan Museum of Folk Musical Instruments.\nAs I wandered near Republic Square, I discovered an English school for Kazakh students. I was invited inside the school and asked if I was free for an English lesson. I said yes, because why not. As the class began our instructor (a Kazakh who became a monk and stayed in India for 3 years at a monastery prior to coming back) taught us some basic English phrases and we played some fun games!\nOn a side note, I bought a vape lol 😭 It sucked.\nShymbulak One of the most breathtaking days was spent at Shymbulak Ski Resort, a short ride from Almaty via the gondola from Medeu (which is the world’s highest ice-skating rink — and I’m the world’s highest ice skater 🥴). By the evening, there was a snowstorm at the top of the mountain so had to quickly scramble. I didn’t want to stay anyway as it was -30°C at the top.\nWind Down On my last day I shopped at a local supermarket (Magnum) and bought some chocolate from Rakhat Chocolate Factory, and visited the First Presidential Park.\nDeparture was in the evening.\nFinal Thoughts and Departure Kazakhstan surprised me in every possible way. If you’re considering paying a visit, I can highly recommend it — preferably in the summer because it opens up several possibilities like hiking to Big Almaty Lake and visiting Kaindy Lake.\nDo svidaniya.\n","permalink":"https://aakarshit.ca/posts/travel-my-trip-to-kazakhstan/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"philosophical-lecture\"\u003ePhilosophical Lecture\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the last year and a half, I have travelled across 5 different countries:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🇰🇿 Kazakhstan\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🇯🇵 Japan\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🇹🇭 Thailand\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🇨🇦 Canada\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTraveling is worth spending money on. You land in a new country, the weather is different, you don’t have the local currency (yet, unless you brought it with you), you gotta figure out how to get to your hotel and you don’t speak the language.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Travel: My trip to Kazakhstan"},{"content":"Motivation I wanted to enable Apple CarPlay/Android Auto on the infotainment of my Ford Ecosport (this works for Figo/Aspire too!), but without swapping out the factory head unit. Reddit says to ditch the car and buy a new one to achieve that goal, and I agree; The question I have is: In this Economy?!?! The car has a nice 9-inch touchscreen so usability won’t be an issue. 😏 The problem? It runs ancient Windows CE 6.0 on ARM (MT33xx processor with 256 MB of RAM). This unit was installed on Ford cars before August 2020 . Post that, it was replaced by an equally bad Android 4.2.2 with still no CarPlay support. Overall, I wanted to check if I could modify a few lines here and there to convert the car into a Decepticon . That didn’t work but I still managed to add CarPlay support and tested it successfully on a 12-hour drive to Goa. 🤩\nA Warning Before we proceed, a word of caution. This is a hack, not a feature. You could kill your head unit, or your airbags could blow out since the head unit is connected to the CAN bus . Most likely not, since I have been using this for more than a year, but you’ve been warned. You’ll be replacing the existing Mapmyindia with third-party software.\nPre-requisites There’s not enough processing power in the built-in unit, so we will need to acquire additional hardware to run CarPlay.\nMake sure that you have a Windows CE unit. To confirm, go to Settings \u0026gt; Wifi connectivity should NOT be present. A USB flash drive (8GB or more) and an SD Card reader. Hardware: Carlinkit CPC200 CCPM/CCPA/CCPW AutoKit dongle (Basically any of these ). I am specifically using CCPM (wired-only) and I suggest you do the same. This can be found on online retailers like Amazon , eBay , Ali Express . Make sure the seller is trusted. It took 23 days to arrive, so patience is key. Cost: ~$30 (Please buy this only after you’re able to flash the AutoKit software onto your unit!) Autokit software merged with Mapmyindia to disguise it as a map update. 🤣 Link: typlo-gh/Ford-WINCE-Autokit Note: If you have an Android head unit, I have not tested this and it will not work.\nReferences I went through a few guides like XDA and YouTube . Unfortunately, I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for — a simple way to launch the app and I don\u0026rsquo;t want to do the finger-gymnastics mentioned in the YouTube video. This is a good reference point, however, because it mentions how to get access to the head unit which might be useful later in this guide. We will use MortScript to launch the app. This is a script interpreter ( user manual ). We need to use this as the OS detects attempts to run unapproved code and blanks out the screen. 🤷 We can bypass that attempt by launching a program to launch another program. We have to test everything though, so I wrote the scripts and tested it on an emulator WinCE Emulator\nActual Hacking There are two ways to load our malware 😀 onto the system and you can follow either one. Physically pulling out the storage is needed in cases where the Soft Attempt fails.\nObjective: We want to update the Maps path to \\SDMEM\\LaunchAutoKit\\Arthur.exe (MortScript executable) which in turn launches Run ( \u0026quot;\\SDMEM\\AutoKit\\BIN\\AutoKit.exe\u0026quot; ) (AutoKit executable)\nSoft Attempt:\nFormat a USB drive to FAT32. Copy the entire contents of this repository to the root of the USB drive (for example - NaviMaps and other directories should be in the root of the USB drive). It should look like this: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 ❯ tree . -L 2 . ├── AutoKit │ ├── BIN │ ├── CAY │ ├── Change icon │ ├── FIRMWARE │ └── Readme.txt ├── LaunchAutoKit │ ├── Arthur.exe │ ├── Arthur.mscr │ └── MortScript.exe ├── LaunchAutoKit-2 │ ├── Arthur.exe │ ├── Arthur.mscr │ └── MortScript.exe ├── LaunchTotalCommander │ ├── Arthur.exe │ ├── Arthur.mscr │ └── MortScript.exe ├── NaviMaps │ ├── Arthur.exe │ ├── arthur.js.acp │ ├── arthur.js.cpf │ ├── arthur.ui.acp │ ├── arthur.ui.cpf │ └── WorkDir └── TC ├── Catalan.lng ├── cecmd.exe ... Insert the prepared USB drive into the available USB port in the infotainment system. Go to Settings \u0026gt; General \u0026gt; Map Update \u0026gt; Yes (make sure the engine is running while contents are being copied). Go to Settings \u0026gt; General \u0026gt; Map Path - Select \\SDMEM\\LaunchAutoKit\\Arthur.exe to select the Autokit application for the next reboot. Settings \u0026gt; General \u0026gt; Reset (this will reboot the unit). Once the unit reboots, tap “Navi” and if you see the screen below, you’re Golden, otherwise, it’s time for maximum effort.\nAutoKit App\nHard Attempt:\nYou can follow the instructions in this YouTube video to open up the head unit and get direct access to the SD card, this is the video I used to reach a point where two roads diverged and I had to take the one less travelled by (Get it? 😹) Once you eject the SD card, format it as FAT32, copy all the contents that you downloaded from my Github repository above maintaining the same directory structure, plug it back into the unit. Test the app out before you fasten the screws to put everything back together. Follow Step 5 in the Soft Attempt section and you should be able to launch the app. What now? Once you have your app running, plug in the AutoKit dongle and the head unit should display the firmware version number (if the dongle is detected) on the bottom left of the screen. Go ahead and connect your phone via the USB-A port to the dongle and CarPlay/AA should work.\nLimitations and Bugs Screen blanks out on reverse camera or when the door is open\nWorkaround: This is a known bug. Just keep the doors closed and drive forward 🤷. In cases when you need to reverse, plug out your phone and plug it back in after you\u0026rsquo;re done. Minor inconvenience.\nVolume controls not working\nWorkaround: This is a known bug. Keep Bluetooth connected and select Audio Output as “Media Center” on your phone. I have made a Siri Shortcut to do this automatically. Just add it to your iPhone \u0026gt; Shortcuts \u0026gt; Automation \u0026gt; When? (CarPlay connects) \u0026gt; Do? (Send Audio To Car) \u0026gt; Run Immediately \u0026gt; Done.\nFinal Words\nDo remember that this is a hack. But oh boy, for a hack it works really damn well! On a side note, I tried getting AI to write part of this tutorial. Unfortunately, it started hallucinating and I was forced to write the thing myself. There’s really no cure for human ingenuity (though Windsurf and Gemini-CLI come close — stay tuned!). 🚀\n","permalink":"https://aakarshit.ca/posts/car-hacks-101-diy-apple-carplay-in-a-ford-ecosport/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"motivation\"\u003eMotivation\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI wanted to enable Apple CarPlay/Android Auto on the infotainment of my Ford Ecosport (\u003cem\u003ethis works for Figo/Aspire too!\u003c/em\u003e), but without swapping out the factory head unit. Reddit says to ditch the car and buy a new one to achieve that goal, and I agree; The question I have is: In this Economy?!?! The car has a nice 9-inch touchscreen so usability won’t be an issue. 😏\nThe problem? It runs ancient Windows CE 6.0 on ARM (MT33xx processor with 256 MB of RAM). This unit was installed on Ford cars before \n\u003ca href=\"https://www.team-bhp.com/news/ford-ecosport-infotainment-will-now-run-android-os\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eAugust 2020\u003c/a\u003e\n. Post that, it was replaced by an equally bad Android 4.2.2 with still no CarPlay support. Overall, I wanted to check if I could modify a few lines here and there to convert the car into a \n\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decepticon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eDecepticon\u003c/a\u003e\n. That didn’t work but I still managed to add CarPlay support and tested it successfully on a 12-hour drive to Goa. 🤩\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Car Hacks 101: DIY Apple Carplay in a Ford EcoSport"},{"content":"Prologue I became a permanent resident of Canada on December 22, 2024, after working in India for 6 years, nailing my CELPIP/IELTS with CLB 10, and completing two degrees! If you have been following the news, immigration has become extremely difficult, and those already in the country with a work permit or an education are unable to qualify for PR because there\u0026rsquo;s a cap in place; the scores are just too high. I got lucky, at the right time, and my occupation is/was in demand. More on my decision to move from Bangalore, India into a deep freezer — in a later blog post.\nSo, after activating my PR status, I came back to India and started planning my move. In the interim, I needed a phone number. I initially signed up with Chatr but moved over to voip.ms to retain my Canadian cell phone number for the time I would be in India. 😎\nSo, for the terrific price of USD 0.85 a month, I retained my phone number, calls are priced at barely one cent per minute to US/Canada. I have the ability to receive/send SMS as well. It works so well that if you want a landline (yes, in 2025!) and want to skip the middleman (your mobile network operator) — you can plug in a hardware landline phone with IP functionality (like a Grandstream ). My requirement is to receive phone calls on my iPhone; however, hence, I use a Softphone - this works as long as you have Internet connectivity (i.e., mobile data). I like trying out something new every now and then.\nRegister and setup an account Go to VoIP.ms and click on Sign Up. Fill in your details and complete the registration process. Most of the time, you’ll need to provide a photo ID to complete your sign-up. I provided my Canadian ID because they cancelled my sign-up when I provided them with my Indian ID (probably because they thought I was going to use their service to impersonate tech support and tell people they have a virus on their computer lol 😭) Finances \u0026gt; Add Funds (minimum top-up of $15) Go to DID Numbers \u0026gt; Order DID(s) \u0026gt; Canada (or country of your choice) \u0026gt; Ontario \u0026gt; anything other than Brampton \u0026gt; select the billing plan (per minute) \u0026gt; POP (point of presence) - very important that you select something physically close to your location to get the best latency (I chose London) \u0026gt; Confirm You can buy multiple numbers if you create a sub-account, but I’ll just stick with “Main”. At this point, you should get a confirmation email. You can go to Manage DID(s) and enable SMS if you wish (and forward it to your email). Go to the Main Menu \u0026gt; Account Settings \u0026gt; General \u0026gt; Caller ID \u0026gt; Set the Caller ID to the number you just leased. Go to Security tab \u0026gt; Main SIP/IAX Password \u0026gt; Set Random Password. Go to Advanced \u0026gt; Set NAT to Yes and Max Expiry to 3600 seconds. Now, we need a Softphone — this is an app that allows us to use the SIP account we just configured above. You may go to this link and check out the options available. TL;DR, For Android, the official app by voip.ms is available. But since I’m a generous payer of Apple tax, I’d prefer to use Groundwire or Sessiontalk . You’ll need to use an app that supports server-side push notifications (and that ain\u0026rsquo;t free) because mobile phones cannot maintain a consistent connection to the POP we selected above. If you are OK with missing incoming calls and only need this for outgoing calls, you\u0026rsquo;re good to use the free version of Sessiontalk or Bria Mobile.\nConfigure Softphone and test that your calls go through Once you have downloaded the Softphone app of your choice, you have to configure it. I can\u0026rsquo;t list the instructions separately for every app but generally, the configuration is simple to do:\nAdd New Account and select SIP: Username: You’d have received this in your email (SIP/IAX Main Username) Password: The random password that you also got in your email Domain: POP that you selected in the setup above (London for me) Save and connect. Play around in the app settings and make sure to enable push notifications (this would be a paid feature for the reasons explained above unless using the free app on Android). Place a test call to a toll-free number in Canada. You can test incoming too by signing up for WhatsApp or checking your email for inbound SMS to test messaging. Your homepage on voip.ms’ website should look like below, and you should see a green “Registered”.\nHome Page on voip.ms\nHow it works The phone number that you’re using belongs to voip.ms. The inbound call is routed through the public PSTN network by the origin MNO and lands at the POP (London) that you chose. The server routes it to your device. The call follows the reverse path for outbound calls and ultimately ends up with your intended recipient.\nCongratulations, you\u0026rsquo;re all set! You cut out your middleman (MNO) for your secondary number and swapped it for a reliable, high-quality SIP provider.\nYou can now experiment with the Account Settings and can verify your existing caller ID. This means that you can call your contacts in your home country over internet when you\u0026rsquo;re overseas without incurring international roaming charges, as the call placed on the SIP account won\u0026rsquo;t be routed through your network operator 🙂\nOptional and to do:\nEncrypt SIP Traffic under Account Settings \u0026gt; Advanced. This will encrypt your signalling protocol with TLS and your audio stream with SRTP. You’ll need to make appropriate changes in the Softphone app as well. I have decided to leave it off, I use a VPN on public networks anyway, so nobody can spy on my medical condition called Witzelsucht 😇 Port over to a physical network provider in the future so I can have mobile data on the go once this becomes my primary number. Profit?! ","permalink":"https://aakarshit.ca/posts/hello-world-get-a-low-cost-cad-us-phone-number-and-bypass-your-mobile-network-provider/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"prologue\"\u003ePrologue\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI became a permanent resident of Canada on December 22, 2024, after working in India for 6 years, nailing my CELPIP/IELTS with CLB 10, and completing two degrees! If you have been following the news, immigration has become extremely difficult, and those already in the country with a work permit or an education are unable to qualify for PR because there\u0026rsquo;s a cap in place; the scores are just too high. I got lucky, at the right time, and my occupation is/was in demand. More on my decision to move from Bangalore, India into a deep freezer — in a later blog post.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Low-cost CAD/US phone number over VoIP"},{"content":"I am a Site Reliability Engineer with 7+ years of experience building scalable, fault-tolerant systems in fintech and telecom. Proven track record automating infrastructure, improving performance metrics, and delivering resilient production environments handling over 400M financial transactions daily. I like to travel, discover new places, train in the gym, cycling, riding/driving, music and socializing during my free time. I’m looking for long-term work in Canada that aligns with my experience and growth journey.\nWork History Lead Engineer at OpenText | November 2025 - Present Site Reliability Engineer 3 at PhonePe | August 2021 - July 2025 Software Engineer - DevOps at Airtel x Labs | August 2020 - July 2021 Systems Engineer at Infosys | September 2018 - August 2020 🔗 Resume | 🌐 LinkedIn | 📧 Contact Me Tech Stack I usually work with Languages \u0026amp; Scripting: Python (+FastAPI), Shell, Perl, Go (Learning) Operating Systems: Linux (RHEL, Ubuntu) Infrastructure \u0026amp; Automation: Ansible, SaltStack Datastores: MariaDB Galera (including multi-node operations), Aerospike, RMQ Containers \u0026amp; Orchestration: Docker, Podman, Drove , Nomad Secrets \u0026amp; Security: HashiCorp Vault, Consul, Thales HSMs (Hardware Security) Monitoring \u0026amp; Logging: Riemann, LibreNMS, TIG, ELK, PMM Networking: BGP, DNS ( djbdns ), WireGuard, LVS, Datacenter Networks Cloud \u0026amp; Tooling: Oracle Cloud, DigitalOcean, GCP AI Tooling: Windsurf, Gemini-CLI VCS \u0026amp; CI/CD: Git, Gitlab, Jenkins Data Warehousing: Ab Initio , Apache Airflow, Cloudera Platform Misc: Nginx, Traefik, HAProxy, OpenZFS, Keepalived, L3DSR , KVM What’s on my Mac? Hardware: M4 MacBook Air 15” (Primary), Acer Aspire A715-75G (Homelab and backup) Applications: Productivity: Maccy, Amphetamine, Better Display, Homebrew Documents: Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat AI Tooling: Ollama, Warp, Windsurf, Gemini-CLI, VS Code (+Copilot) Notes: Bear (markdown), Google Keep Utilities: PeaZip, Multipass, Podman Desktop, Popcorn Time 😎 Others: Postman, Windscribe, Keystore Explorer, iTerm2, SourceTree Customisation and Brew packages: Ohmyzsh, CsshX, nmap, fzf, mtr, tcptraceroute, sslscan, zstd Accessories: USB-C Hub, Acer 144 Hz 28” Monitor, Waterproof sleeve ","permalink":"https://aakarshit.ca/about/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI am a Site Reliability Engineer with 7+ years of experience building scalable, fault-tolerant systems in fintech and telecom. Proven track record automating infrastructure, improving performance metrics, and delivering resilient production environments handling over 400M financial transactions daily. I like to travel, discover new places, train in the gym, cycling, riding/driving, music and socializing during my free time. I’m looking for long-term work in Canada that aligns with my experience and growth journey.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"About Me"}]