Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig hnremote.net. NS
Answer
hnremote.net. 5 NS ac3edns01.hnremote.net.
hnremote.net. 5 NS ac5edns02.hnremote.net.
hnremote.net. 5 NS detedns01.hnremote.net.
hnremote.net. 5 NS detedns02.hnremote.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0