That's a matter of opinion. The US has its faults, but overall it's quite easy to have a very high quality of life here, and to live a huge variety of different lifestyles if that suits you.
> It’s still a significantly better place to live than America or Europe though.
They keep a small, 'racially pure' population, ban any negative press, kill any undesirables....sure it is.
> The same can be said about the Us which stirs up wars in other countries, kidnaps other countries presidents and has ICE arresting kids.
The US under Trump has changed a lot, this is true, but in most states it's not putting people to death for minor reasons and actually allows enough freedom to make love worth living. You'd have to be an NPC to be happy living in Singapore IMO.
You do not seem to like a rules based society. I’d have no problem renouncing my German citizenship and become Singaporean. I just want stability, safety, good food, good bars, excellent transit, low taxes and excellent internet.
Germany has always had a massive and influential art and music scene. It's been the source of fine cinema. It's globally known for raves, dabbling in drugs, and wild fashion. I encounter Germans all around the world hiking up mountains in freezing temperatures while wearing nothing but shorts and sneakers and smiling while doing so. Germans are known for their strict rules when it comes to the day to day, but they very much know how to unwind.
Singapore has none of these. The national pastime is talking about how much money you have and how much you love having money and can't wait to have more money. And the money never goes towards interesting experiences. It's the same as Dubai. Shopping and international chains and thinking that means class. It's boring and makes East Germany seem like a good time.
Singapore is also a very young country though, so it's not fair to compare to Germany. You do have a point though that there is not much out of the box thinking. I found that to be higher in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
A filipino friend of mine moved to Australia after being denied PR in SG, mainly due his race.
As a white person, I’d probably never get PR too but I think it’s good that they maintain the current percentages, otherwise the country would turn unrecognizable like Germany or France.
As a German expat who lived in Singapore for 3 years, it’s still the best country I ever lived in and I’ve also worked in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan HK, and Germany.
Everything works, it’s very efficient, public transit and internet is good and it’s extremely safe. It also has great food and has low taxes.
Most Western countries just can’t compete and while the UAE is pretty well run in some aspect, there’s always the religious part which makes me uneasy when I’m there.
As a single person without kids, there is no better place than Singapore.
As a german, are you ok with the death penalty (for as little as 14 grams of drugs)? Are you with violent and cruel corporal punishment (for as little as vandalism)?
Yes, for most part. SG has a zero tolerance policy.
I do think the death penalty for drugs is reasonable. Drug dealers destroy families and communities for their own profit. The arrival card in Singapore literally states that smuggling drugs is punishable by death. If you still attempt, that sounds like a “you” problem.
Also the punishment for vandalism or rape sounds reasonable.
The treatment of foreign construction workers is not good and can be improved.
> Well, it's not. It's barbaric and primitive. A warning is no justification.
It's actually Singapore that turned me against the death penalty. I saw a photo on a news site one day showing a casket in Singapore, with some kind of placard showing the decedent's name, DOB, and then the date that they "died."
They didn't die due to illness or injury; they died because Singapore executed them. That was it for me.
Executing people guilty of serious crimes is good and just. They should have a proper trial, and the crimes should be sufficiently serious, but execution is no more or less "barbaric" than the alternatives. As Adam Smith said, "mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
> Executing people guilty of serious crimes is good and just.
Wrong. It's barbaric and primitive.
> execution is no more or less "barbaric" than the alternatives
Yes, it is. People make mistakes. People have infinite possibility to grow, change and contribute to society. Snuffing everything someone is out because of an arbitrary society rule that ultimately does less harm than murder is indefensible.
> "mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
Taken as far to defend murder it becomes nonsense.
Rape, murder, drug smuggling, terrorism are not mistakes you accidentally make. These are serious crimes destroying lives and the offenders do not deserve a second chance.
Drug smuggling doesn't always destroy lives, sometimes it's just giving people something that shouldn't be illegal in the first place. Rape can very much be a crime of passion and a mistake. Terrorism can be the result of indoctrination. Rape while less likely to be a mistake also doesn't deserve the death penalty.
Yes, all these offenders deserve a second chance. Extreme penalties to set a deterrent are not justice. Just barbarism. Very primitive people.
> Yes, it is. People make mistakes. People have infinite possibility to grow, change and contribute to society. Snuffing everything someone is out because of an arbitrary society rule that ultimately does less harm than murder is indefensible.
Putting aside statistics on actual reform instead of fantastical infinite possibility, as I understand this policy mostly serves to deter foreigners from attempting the potentially very lucrative business of smuggling drugs into Singapore. Even if Singapore didn't take the "barbaric" approach of executing them, they would have to either host them as prisoners on their already very limited land, or go through the process of deporting them to their home country, where they might not even face any consequences and just try again. Why should they bear this burden for people who have no ties to Singapore and will never contribute anything to it?
> as I understand this policy mostly serves to deter foreigners from attempting the potentially very lucrative business of smuggling drugs into Singapore.
So what? That's not a justification.
> Why should they bear this burden for people who have no ties to Singapore and will never contribute anything to it?
Singapore is perfectly able to control their borders better than most countries. It's not like the US where it's relatively easy to sneak in. 'They might come back' is a poor justification for murder.
> what makes _your_ opinion better than mine, or that of the Singaporeans?
Because I believe it can be supported and be shown to be objectively correct. Not that I'm willing to put in the effort when it already took this much for you to realize I was stating an opinion though.
> Okay, why should they? Drug traffickers are perfectly capable of not attempting to smuggle drugs into Singapore.
If you think casual murder is fine because it's convenient, I don't think there's much for us to discuss anyway. We clearly have drastically different values. I'll just take solace in the fact that Singapore likely won't survive another 100 years.
> Because I believe it can be supported and be shown to be objectively correct.
Out of curiosity, How can your argument "be supported and shown to be objectively correct" ?
It seems the evidence is actually the other way around. After introduction of the death penalty in the 90s, the average net amount of opium trafficked to Singapore famously dropped by ~70%.
I do not support the death penalty myself, but primarily for ethical and moral reasons to preserve our humanity - which is constantly under attack. But not "objective ones" since the evidence clearly supports the death penalty for "objective reasons". For these positions, objectivity should be left in the gutter.
> After introduction of the death penalty in the 90s, the average net amount of opium trafficked to Singapore famously dropped by ~70%.
If we introduced the death penalty for minor shoplifting, minor shoplifting would probably drop by a huge percentage. Would that justify it?
> But not "objective ones" since the evidence clearly supports the death penalty for "objective reasons". For these positions, objectivity should be left in the gutter.
I disagree. When you evaluate all the pros and cons, I think the evidence is solidly against the death penalty.
> If we introduced the death penalty for minor shoplifting, minor shoplifting would probably drop by a huge percentage. Would that justify it?
Of-course it wouldn't - but you are precisely reinforcing my point. Because opponents can claim via evidence that the death penalty is effective for this, if you argue on the basis of "facts". Thus, objectivity should not be used as an argument for an ethical and moral human principle. Such principles stand by themselves to maintain the sanctity of the human soul - no justification needed.
> but you are precisely reinforcing my point. Because opponents can claim via evidence that the death penalty is effective for this, if you argue on the basis of "facts".
I don't believe I am. The death penalty being effective at reducing a crime isn't itself a sufficient justification of the death penalty.
> Thus, objectivity should not be used as an argument for an ethical and moral human principle. Such principles stand by themselves to maintain the sanctity of the human soul - no justification needed.
We do have objective arguments though; ultimately everything can be quantified by the amount of harm or good it does.
> Because I believe it can be supported and be shown to be objectively correct.
Then that's not an opinion, it's a proposition aiming at fact, and you should back it up rather than restating it loudly and more slowly when asked for justification.
It can be both. There's such a thing as opinions that coincide with facts. Until I put in effort to support it though, I only offer it as an opinion.
> you should back it up rather than restating it loudly and more slowly when asked for justification.
It's a fair amount of work to do so, and I haven't seen anyone worthy of putting in such work. This site isn't great, from a practical point of view, for that type of lengthy debate, either.
>and I haven't seen anyone worthy of putting in such work
So aside from the subhuman Singaporeans who should be violently forced to adopt your ethics, it is also everyone on HN that is far below your golden ethical level and not worth of effortful discussion (but definitely worth moral lecturing and grandstanding), got it.
> So aside from the subhuman Singaporeans who should be violently forced to adopt your ethics,
I didn't use the word subhuman, I used the word barbaric, and that's more regarding the authoritarian regime in power.
> it is also everyone on HN that is far below your golden ethical level and not worth of effortful discussion (but definitely worth moral lecturing and grandstanding), got it.
There's plenty of people who I could have a great, in-depth, reasonable discussion with, it's just that you're not one of them. Even this reply of yours is mainly bait, reliant on twisting things to get a reaction.
You're one of those commenters who needs to have the last word...this unproductive discussion is still going to go in for a few more replies yet because you can't let stuff go. I'm guessing my comment offended you because you live in Singapore and like it, is that it? All of this is just defensiveness?
> execution is no more or less "barbaric" than the alternatives.
You'll need to put more thought into it. Imagine your kid traveling somewhere, smoking pot, flying back to Singapore, getting randomly checked and facing consequences.
“Any Singapore Citizen or Permanent Resident found to have abused drugs overseas will be treated as if he/she had abused drugs within Singapore. Consumption of a controlled drug is an offence and a person may face imprisonment of a minimum of 1 year and up to 10 years, or a fine not exceeding S$20,000 or both.”
Because you don't want to, I guess. I'm not particularly interested in discussing this with you because I don't get the feeling from your responses so far that there is a possibility of productive high-level discussion. Take care.
The paradox of tolerance is well studied and we've thru this song and dance for decades. Your "tolerance" would turn the whole world into North Korea/Singapore totalitarian society and we must not just "disagree" with you but violently resist and remove you from our society much like the communists . Arguments for tolerance against such parasitic .antonsocial. Anti liberty behaviors is beyond stupid.
As a European absolutely yes and I wish we had the fortitude to do it. It would literally save the EU. We never will, so right wing populism and the struggle to suppress it will probably destroy Europe.
I would argue even with kids it is great (but of course can be expensive!). I lived and worked there for a couple of years during COVID with a young family and loved it (once the lockdowns and pandemic stuff blew over of course).
As you mentioned, for families, it’s extremely safe, everything is well run and maintained so healthcare and education are not a concern. Proximity to other countries for travel is excellent (well, I’m from Melbourne so much easier to get places than from here!), and the country it self has plenty to do for families in terms of activities, shopping, and food.
Beyond that, I found Singaporeans just really great to work with and be around. It’s really multicultural, they value education and talent so the workforce is full of bright and capable people, and there is a huge expat community as well.
The only major downside for me - the heat and humidity! It was a struggle the first few months for sure.
The heat can definitely be intense. It can also get a boring fast because it’s such small place, so traveling is a a must! I believe with kids it can be a challenge because there’s conscription for males and that also applied to permanent residents.
A country where 10% of people are citizens, there’s a few expats, and nearly everyone else is a Bangladeshi or Nepali slave laborer doing all the work. With no rights, no prospect of citizenship, etc. The Davos view of where societies are headed.
I mean it's a person praising Singapore .. their moral values are so self evident I have to question you even bringing up... Like duh. They LIKE that part lol
To be fair, Since they have lived in quite a few locations you can easily become desensitized to the conditions of these so called "slaves". The conditions of them in the UAE are not verry different from Singapore. The law allows for transportation on the back of open trucks, mass casualty traffic incidents involving the poorest workers are common. For a maid if they want to change employees they need permission from their current employer and the current employer can choose instead to repatriate them, with 30 days to exit the country and no money or means to challenge any mistreatment the abused are simply expelled and forgotten about. You can imagine the power imbalance, sa cases, torture and malnutrition. To the outsider it looks well balanced but it is simply well segregated. Even public housing has a ratio per building causing minority races to be unable to sell their properties on a level market rate.
Having a maid is actually a huge benefit for most expats/locals in SG, Hong Kong and Dubai. They’re basically part of the family but you need a helper if you work until 8pm.
If you hire a maid and fire her, you have to pay her repatriation back to her country of origin.
It’s not okay but I’m not moving to THEIR country and tell them how to run it. Most people want to live their life and safety and taxes are major factors affecting quality of life
They have a very opaque and subjective permanent residency program. So while they get all the benefits out of you as an immigrant, they may provide none in return.
> Everything works, it’s very efficient, public transit and internet is good and it’s extremely safe. It also has great food and has low taxes. Most Western countries just can’t compete…
Why do you think New York or Chicago isn’t like this? What could western countries change?
This is obviously oversimplified but I think this is a big factor:
Singapore is a business masquerading as a country. While it is technically democratic, in practice there are some barriers preventing truly free and fair elections. That being said, the leaders in Singapore are not corrupt and truly do focus on what's best for the country. As a result decisions are made quickly, for the greater good, and are not politically driven. The leadership have the latitude to make decisions that they believe will make the country better. Sometimes these decisions don't have a lot of public support (because people are naturally more short-sighted) but, because of the political system, they don't need to rely on public support.
In the case of Singapore, I think this dynamic has led to a compounding effect of good decisions that have put the country in such a strong place today. You see this similarly with Norway's oil fund; it was likely unpopular initially to reinvest so much money into savings, but today it's paying off where they have a $2T savings account, from which they can withdraw up to 3% annually ($60B) for the needs of Norway.
> That being said, the leaders in Singapore are not corrupt and truly do focus on what's best for the country. As a result decisions are made quickly, for the greater good, and are not politically driven.
But what makes them act this way, lol? That's what every country wants out of its leaders. Why is Singapore able to do it? I know that's a hard question to answer...
> Singapore is a business masquerading as a country
I don't see why this would lead the country to being well organized. All the big businesses I've seen are very inefficient and disorganized internally, where decisions are made slowly, mostly to benefit the decisionmaker's little princedom inside the company.
I think it’s a mix of valuing education more, a strict enforcement of the law with severe punishment, a small area to maintain, electing educated politicians and demographics. Asians tend to commit less violent crimes. Markham in Canada for example has a much lower violent crime rate than most of the Canada and is predominantly Chinese.
Wealthy Asians tend to commit less violent crimes. If you go to a country with less law and order (like PNG), you’ll see more violence.
America and other countries had a spike of Vietnamese, Hmong, and Chinese gangs in the 80s/90s due to a refugee influx from Vietnam. Turns out a forcibly relocated, non-wealthy population who has to readjust to live in a new country is going to have issues, even if they are Asian.
The correlation between per-capita GDP and homicide rate is fairly weak, and if you graph it and color-code it you can clearly see that asian countries tend to have lower homicide rate at similar income levels: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate-vs-gdp-pc?y...
Countries like Bangladesh have fewer homicides than Canada, and less than twice as many as the U.K. or Sweden, while much richer Latin American countries have 5-20 times as many.
Chicagos biggest problems are corruption and special interests. Corruption means that labor has become very expensive for the government and most civil servant leaders tend to be incompetent. The incentives created when being in leadership is not about competence led to an environment where very few in the government are interested in improving the systems they run and those that focus on improvement generally don’t rise to obtain more power. The power of special interests means that it is impossible to make quick decisions, even if they are obvious. Everything is a long, drawn out process, so the decisions that are made tend to be the ones that benefit people who can pay lobbyists. Singapore is pretty much a benevolent dictatorship. Their government makes quick, technocratic decisions that legitimately attempt to make society as a whole better in the long run. The short term popularity of these decisions is effectively irrelevant, which allows them to do things like employing slaves and being extremely tough on crime.
In Switzerland you're not going to rent or buy any housing. If a miracle somehow happens you'll live in hotel room sized studio and your full time job will be rental laws and regulations. With no housing it's irrelevant how real the democracy is there.
I have rented an apartment in Zürich (a hotel-room sized studio as you say, though with high quality construction and amenities). it was indeed pretty frustrating to go through the apartment search, but it is possible to rent housing, as evidenced by the fact that millions of Swiss citizens and residents live indoors.
When I was in my twenties, I didn’t really buy stuff and apartments in Asia are mostly fully furnished. All my
stuff fitted in a 32kg luggage until 2022 or so.
Most Chinese apartments come furnished, at least in Beijing. You have to negotiate with the landlord if you want to use your own furniture. I’ve never had an apartment in Beijing that didn’t have a washer machine. No dryer of course, and these are cheap washer machines, you could buy one yourself for 1k RMB or so, well 20 years ago you could.
1. I don't think I'll ever buy Dell again. My current monitor is a Dell S3221QS 32" screen and it has vertical lines and starts flickering on both the Macbook M1 and the Mac Studio with the M4 Max chip after some time, which is a known issue[0][1]. It also defaults to YPbPr colors rather than RGB/SRGB, so the colors look off. I'm using HDMI to HDMI connectivity currently.
Part of it is also my fault as I thought a monitor would work with any computer.
2. That aside, what are you all using for window management on these large screens? I'm currently using Rectangle on Mac, but I was wondering if there's a better way.
I've gone the other direction - and after having struggled with other various monitors (the worst is easily the SAMSUNG 49" Odyssey Neo G9 G95NA - both cruddy capability (should have noted before buying it has no Power Delivery) as well as easily some of the blurriest text ever) - I've decided I will only ever buy Dell Monitors. Every one I've purchased (5 of them) in the last 15sh years has been a flawless performer - no hardware failures either.
Every monitor on every desk at work (around 3000 desks) is a Dell U3821DW - no broadscale systemic complaints that I've ever heard of.
I'm currently using my 4K 27" Dell P2715Q that I bought for $400 back in December 2017, and I've carried (physically) with me from office to office from Michigan to the Bay Area - thing runs for 10+ hours a day (minus weekend) for 8 years running. Eventually it's going to have to give in- and when it does - definitely going to buy another Dell (probably the U2725QE 27" 4K)
I'm kinda the same. I have a Dell monitor and a Gigabyte monitor side by side and my mac constantly loses the connection to the gigabyte monitor. At least once per day I have to unplug my video link to the gigabyte monitor to get the mac to rediscover it, this never happens with the dell one.
Counter-anecdata: I have 2 Dell U2720Q (Ultrasharp 27") bought in 2021 and they've been great.
That said, I've always stuck for Dell's upper-range Ultrasharp (U prefix in models) monitors, being slightly wary of their cheaper series which the S in your S3221QS implies.
I'm using 2x Dell U3011s, one I purchased around ~2013 probably and the other I got used recently for $100. My only issue with them is that they have PWM coil whine that only goes away if I crank the brightness to ~90%, which seems to produce an immense amount of heat and probably power consumption. I'd love to find a viable alternative solution for this, because these are my favorite monitors for now.
The model appears to have been released 16 years ago.
I haven't yet found a monitor that makes sense to replace them with either.
I think there is a slightly newer version of these, but I have the same set up.
I haven’t been able to find anything that has the vertical space that these monitors do. Even Ultra Wide monitors just aren’t tall enough. If I got this 52 inch behemoth that would help, but I would actually lose horizontal space.
I have the 27" from that series. In my experience, after I fixed the RGB issue, I also fixed the flickering issue. And to fix the RGB issue, I used BetterDisplay[1], controlled by a Hammerspoon[2] script[3] that calls its CLI on the appropriate display events.
The free version of BetterDisplay is sufficient, I really don't use any of its other features.
The flickering seems to be gamma related, and is triggered by Nightshift or Flux for me.
I bought a brand new Dell monitor through Amazon’s Dell Store (i.e. fulfilled by Dell themselves and shipped to me directly from their warehouse). The HDMI port broke a couple months later as it was sitting undisturbed on a desk, which was a common problem mentioned in its reviews. Dell flat out refused to replace it, saying that their database showed a different owner than me. Remember, they themselves shipped it straight to me. Amazon did right and let me return it even though it was already past the return period.
I will never, ever buy Dell hardware again. They’re dead to me. And when the IT department at a previous job reported to me, and a Dell rep cold called me to offer us a business plan, I politely explained why I’d rather gargle broken glass than risk my reputation on a vendor who doesn’t understand what a warranty means. That felt pretty good.
Not all of those have "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com" below the shipping timeframe line. It changes depending on inventory stock. The first monitor in the "plus" list says "Ships from and sold by computersale". Some third party sellers can register a device's sale with Dell.
The invoice on my order history says Dell was the seller, and I specifically remember that the label on the unopened box showed that it was shipped directly from Dell’s warehouse.
I went through this like 100 ways when it happened. I bought the monitor from Dell. They shipped it from their hands straight to mine. And when it broke, they refused to make good on it.
I had a strange problem with Dell P2720DC (27'' 2560x1440) - the whole outer edge of the screen would flicker if I used dark background with a lot of dim colours (like dark mode in IDE, or default Grafana theme). It wouldn't happen all the time, but it would happen on a weekly basis (I most often seen that on Sunday). I've RMA'd it, got another monitor, which also started showing the same problem. I gave it to someone who doesn't use dark mode - no issues.
So, I'm not getting another Dell until I'd be sure this issue won't happen again :)
Have you tried disabling GPU temporal dithering via BetterDisplay or StillColor? I had a similar problem with a different brand of monitor, and this has been the only reliable fix.
One of my Dell's would randomly decide that the mini DP connection has no signal, and rebooting the MacBook Pro was the only way to restore it. HDMI would work just fine.
I bought a refurbished P24-something, basically the last 4K monitor I could find that was 24” or smaller — 4k @ 27+ looks bad for me. That Dell has been amazing. Just a counterpoint :)
The Qwen3-coder model you use is pretty good. You can enable the LM Studio API and install the qwen CLI and point to the API endpoint. This basically gives you functionality similar to Claude code.
I agree that the code quality is not on part with gpt5-codex and Claude. I also haven't tried z.ai's models locally yet. I think on a Mac with that size GLM 4.5 Air should be able to run.
For README generation I like gemma3-27b-it-qat and gpt-oss-120b.
100%. My experience has been the same. The docs have their shortcomings and I ended up reading through so many Github issues and random blog posts trying to resolve the issues.
From a documentation perspective, AWS is still the best.
Wow I would literally say the opposite. I even use GCP docs as an example for my engineers on how to write proper docs, and did several workshops using the GCP docs as reference. Happy to share the presentation if interested.
Lots of people used to go to China for work and could do pretty much anything they want, but since Jinping took over it went downhill fast.
Most people in the expat community I know went to Hong Kong and Singapore instead for the following reasons:
1) Easy to do business
2) Easy to get your money in and out.
3) Low taxes
4) Central travel hubs in Asia
5) Less backwards mindset as these cities feel more cosmopolitan and are interconnected with the outside world
With HK having less and less freedom, Singapore is really the only choice for foreigners to have a decent life quality in Asia. Tokyo could potentially be an option too, but it's really hard to live there due the very different structures in Japanese society and taxes are pretty high.
HK, it seems, doesn’t have the death penalty or corporal punishment. Let’s see how long that lasts, but for the time being that’s a huge positive over Singapore.
Expat life is still pretty nice. Soho is bustling. Restaurants are reopening, clubs open to 6am.
Stuff like SVB, CS, and flow on effect to legal is probably just a big an impact.
You are not going to get the death penalty or caning in Singapore if you keep your nose clean (literally and figuratively). Both are only applied for serious crimes, and the few deltas to Western standards on what counts as "serious" (drugs, vandalism) are easily avoided.
On the other hand, HK now has years of imprisonment if you speak the wrong thing. Expats probably less directly affected, but freedom of speech is essential to financial success and the local economy will never recover.
IMO, Hong Kong's number 1 problem is that its unique position as the gateway to China has faded away, both the role as an intermediary and as a key shipping port.
Clean air, clean environment, safety, access to nature, food safety, (mostly) free/uncensored internet, easy to do business, easy to do daily things, good public transportation, safety, good medical system, not a lot of corruption.
There's other things as well, but the above things are quite important to me. Your mile may vary though :-)
> It's a barbaric totalitarian state that hides it well.
The same can be said about the Us which stirs up wars in other countries, kidnaps other countries presidents and has ICE arresting kids.
I’d pick Singapore over the US any day of the week.
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