Robin Hood is dangerous for the young millennial. Short term trading is really risky and if you have some cash saved up it can make a big difference in the longer term if you don't blow it up or lose it. Being young matters.
If you're in Australia and looking for something longer term access to Berkshire Hathaway shares or ETFs https://getfirststep.com is another service too [no individual shares] its more like wealthfront/betterment/acorns.
They fractionalise the investment so you don't need huge amounts which is quite nice.
Is there a particular reason most US investing startups require an SSN? A lot of foreign ones seem to only need the address/id (it's usually okay if the investor is foreign).
If you're in Australia and want to try investing in a similar way check out http://getfirststep.com.
I wish Lambda would allow listening to a socket [it helps binaries communicate with node]. This would move our team to use this without any further doubt.
The Common Agricultural Policy has its upsides too. It's nice to know a lot of the produce is based of a certain baseline. Particularly when it comes to pesticides and GMO & allowing this to work in market through the use CAP
On a technical level, it's possible, on a practical level it's not. You can't get 100% uptime due to the unforeseen problems that will hit once in a while.
If the downtime was anticipated it can always be averted. Even a Fortune 500 can expect some downtime over a period large enough.
Take Sony earlier this year. The US government itself the year before.
It is natural for issues for happen like this time to time. If it's not technology, something else. Australia's visa offices (DIBP) are on industrial action at the moment.