Having worked for a fax brand.. that doesn't stop shady characters from just using stolen card numbers. It's extremely common.

They own most fax brands. And allegedly sue (unless you settle) virtually every electronic fax provider for patent infringement.

Source: Used to work for, then own a fax brand many years ago.

... Who are colo'd in New York City.

and at Switch Datacenters in the Netherlands. I am EU customer. And its aussie company.

Of the 25-30 times I have entered China, only once was I asked a question and it was "Are you here on business?".

They are exceedingly polite... Granted it may be because you have to receive a visa prior and the application is pretty extensive.

On other hand, being Canadian I have been grilled several times at both Canadian and US immigration.

This ideology is what gets people in trouble with the tax authorities of their resident country... talk to an accountant and watch them laugh you out the door.

Why? The company would be formally Estonian. You'd pay your 20% on any dividends to Estonia, then whatever tax your country of residence demands.

I'm not advocating tax fraud in any way shape or form. I'm saying Estonia will allow you to setup an Estonian business, and has a business friendly tax structure.

It won't help you with your personal taxation when you bring your money back as dividends/salary. But it will help you if you choose to reinvest it in the business.

www.tarsnap.com - it's pay as you go, encrypted and super simple to use and script using cron

^ this.

Github takes care of code and config.

AWS S3 takes care of uploaded static files.

But Tarsnap takes care of my database backups.

The only thing to be aware of is that restore times can be very slow.

Even if you incorporate in say Delaware, if you are physically present running your business in New York you must register your LLC there (Authority to Transact Business) which comes with the same requirements.

Interesting - sounds like things are worse than I thought. What does "physically present running your business" mean for a web service?

(Really curious here because my cofounder lives in NY.)

if you are living and working in a state that your company should be registered in that state

What if owners of a company don't live or work in the same state as each other? What if they don't even live in the US?

i honestly dont know about operating a us company from a foreign country but if you have two owners in two states you would have a primary state where you incorporate and the other state you would set up a foreign corp (basically says one company is working in a new state) additionally you could choose a third state like delaware then have a foreign corp in each of the other states

That's right - "foreign LLCs" seeking authority to do business in NY are subject to the same requirement: http://www.dos.ny.gov/corps/llcfaq.asp#pubreq

Taxi, takeoff and landing are the most critical parts of a flight. If something goes wrong and you can't hear instructions, chaos etc because your distracted with your music then you are a danger to yourself and your seatmates around you.

Is that actually an official position though? I've only ever heard it as post hoc rationalization. There might be a bit of sense to it, but on the other hand, it's not hard to jostle someone into paying attention, as I'm sure your neighbors would. They don't prevent you from going to sleep before takeoff or landing, and that's at least as difficult a context switch.

Nor do they forbid you from being deaf during takeoff. They may ask you to change seats, so perhaps it is reasonable to ask that people sitting in those particular seats not have headphones on, but otherwise listening to music seems fine to me.

At least in Canada, you're only allowed to have headphones on if they're earbuds (easy to quickly remove) and connected to the in-flight sound system (so you still hear announcements). I haven't paid attention to the onboard safety dance in ages, so I don't recall what it is elsewhere.

Justification being that earbuds don't get in the way as much as headphones.

There is literally no end to the inanity of bureaucracy.

My in-ear monitors are much more difficult to remove (not to mention get in) than headphones.

If something goes wrong, you're going to take your earbuds out well before you have a chance to actually do anything.

Southwest markets as being cheap. Go compare their prices with the legacy carriers and you will often find they are priced about the same.

The risk of doing business in an offshore jurisdiction.