http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-pepe-the-frog-hate-symbol-20161011-snap-htmlstory.html

It always amazes me that people that can't form a cogent argument denegrate those that can with insults and childish, sopphomoric responses. Looking back over this thread, the arguments against me are just "shut the fuck up", "it's not a big deal", and "we don't want to lose our points". I've shown respect by building arguments based on actual data and sources. I feel sad that others can't show that respect.

It will be interesting in ten years, if Pepe continues on the increasingly racist track he is on, if some of you will try to distance yourself from these defences. All over the world are people with regrets about not seeing things before they got out of hand. As alt-right violence gets increasingly associated with Pepe as their mascot, will you still feel the same? The internet is forever.

I will not apologize for being too concerned about fighting iconography that is increasingly associated hate groups. I also (again) point out that the creator of Pepe is also deeply concerned.

I don't understand why it woundn't just be better to avoid the meme altogether. Sure I could create a swastika based kata and defend it with, "It's not always a racist symbol, it's been used in the Navajo and Hindu religion for thousands of years." But why? Why not just choose one of the seemingly infinite possible items? Why run the rist of offending someone?

@Aces

"...otherwise it's a waste of time and unecessary 'anger'."

And yet, the only interactions you've had with me have been to scream insults at me. Don't try to convince me how smart you are and how high your discorse level is (your use of that makes me question if you know what that means) - you show it with how you behave.

When someone makes a detailed and respectful argument and all you can do is log in to scream "@ksjazzguitar once again, shut the fuck up" and "they're either a troll or a retard, unfortunately it's really difficult to tell the two apart. My money is on a troll since I don't think it's physically possible to be that retarded".

You expect me to respect you as some intellectual? Point me to the intelligent argument that you've made. You can make up all the excuses of why you need to scream insults and why it's not your fault somehow - but those are your choices. You are responsible for your own choices, no one else. You are responsible for how you act towards others, no one else. Part of maturity is understanding that. The irony is that you are lablelling me as a troll. Maybe that word means something different in your country.

@SandQueen

"Keep in mind that this guy has already made similar remarks on another kata, saying that it's spreading hate and hateful ideas."

That's not true. A few months ago I commented that a kata was being used to push an ideological agenda and to childishly mock an a opposing political idea. I said that I felt that this was innappropriate for a programming forum, that this isn't a place to be taking cheap shots at political ideologies you don't like. I still believe that. Fortunately, not all kata makers are childish enough to create katas that mock ideas they don't like or this place would go to shit fairly quickly.

I choose my words very carefully. The word "hate" was not used once. Please don't put your strawman words in my mouth so you can argue against your imaginary version of me.

Your comment about it invalidating solutions is a fair one. I just think there are somethings more important than a few points from this kata. And it wouldn't be the first time this has happened and it would take very minor tweaks.

I really suspect that people defending apathy towards the Pepe meme haven't actually taken the time to look them up. If you can take a look at this page:

https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/pepe-the-frog

(don't forget the images at the bottom) and tell me that you see no room for concern - then I guess you are a diffent kind of human than I am. And realize that these images are increasing, not decreasing. Even the creator of Pepe has come out against it and killed off the character a few months ago because the whole thing made him sick. This is how hate groups have always done it. Iconography is very important to them. That's why people like the ADL and SPLC track these things so closely. Hate groups have always loved symbols, most of them coopted from innocent sources. They count on apathy to allow their images to spread. And they count on increased desensitization. I'm reminded of the anti-Jewish cartoons spreading in 1930s Germany or the anti-Japanese cartoons spreading in the US. A few people complained about then too. I guess today they'd be called "trolls" too. If that's the brush you want to paint me with, I'll accept it proudly. I'd rather be rememebered as fighting hate rather than being someone that split hairs to try to decide how little to care and how much apathy is acceptable.

Many people ONLY know Pepe as a racist meme, having seen the coverage of it. It's like people that ONLY know the swastika as a Nazi symbol at not as an age old religious symbol. If someone made a swastika kata, the same exact arguments could be made in support of it.

But of course codewars is not imuce from internet stupidity. I find it amusing that the guy accusing me of being a troll and retard is the one taking cheap shots at the guy trying to make a detailed, supported, and cogent argument. I guess in the land of stylish ignorance, the people trying to make a polite, informed argument is the "troll". Thank you Ace, you make me laugh. The level of your discourse tells me all I need to know about you, Ace.

@kingcobra

You say you were unaware of the adoption of this meme by racist organizations, and I'll take you at your word.

There are several articles you can read about the history of the coopting of this symbol.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/how-pepe-the-frog-became-a-nazi-trump-supporter-and-alt-right-symbol

https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/pepe-the-frog

Earlier this year Matt Furie (the creator of Pepe) killed off the Pepe character because disgust at it's increasing use as a hate symbol. Even it's author doesn't want Pepe anymore.

I can also sympathize about putting all that work into creating your first kata only to have this crap happen. I know how hard it is to come up with an original idea. When I made my first kata, within hours someone published a cut-rate version of my idea, sloppily thrown together, obviously stealing my idea. Infuriatingly, the other kata is the one that got approved and mine is still in beta.

I might humbly suggest that you change your kata when you get a chance. It's the intersting algorithmic challenge that makes your kata interesting, not the Pepe aspect. Really, it could be anything collectible, like baseball cards or coins.

But I'm sorry if you're innocently caught up in this crap storm. My father was a federal agent that investigated hate groups, sometimes undercover. I grew up listening to how these guys operate and how they spread their ideas and iconography, sometimes using people unknowingly. Pepe is all too familiar.

"Fair" is in the eye of the beholder. I saw an instance of people being exposed to symbol that had been coopted to racist puroposes and being apathetic about it.

Are they the same exact thing? No, of course not. No two things are exactly the same. If they were exactly the same thing, there would be no need to discuss comparisons.

I think you're confusing "comparison" and "equation". I wasn't equating the two, in whole or part. I wasn't even comparing every aspect of the two. I was comparing certain aspects of each, finding similarities (not exact equality).

Do they merit the same level of concern? Not really. But that's OK. Just because two things aren't the same severity does not mean that they cannot be compared. And really only time will tell if it is something that will be of great concern.

At some point in history the KKK were just some guys who put on some hoods and repeated some racist ideas. No one was concerned. I could paint a similar picture of 1930s Germany. What do we have now? Nativist and racist rhetoric is on the rise. Hate crimes are increasing. There is the rise of a racist and nativist movement globally. They have adopted a symbol. I think there is grounds for a fair comparison there.

But don't worry. You're in good company. I'm sure in the American 1860s and the German 1930s there were lots of people rolling their eyes when people tried to raise alarms. There complaints where nickeled and dimed into irrelevance.

You can chose apathy and willful ignorance if you want. I was raised to hate and oppose racism in all forms. And there's absolutely no reason to have a kata that revolves around a symbol listed as a hate symbol.

You know, this probably won't make any converts to the alt-right. But encroaching apathy from desensitization is a real thing too. Again, 1930s Germany wasn't filled with racists, but with people that no longer cared when alarms of anti-semitism were raised.

When I die I'd rather be remembered for caring too much than too little. Maybe this surge in the alt-right we're seeing across the globe and the rise of nativist populism and fascism are just momentary fads. I don't want to bury my head in the sand and hope for the best. I'd rather be on the right side of history. I don't want to take the chance. History has shown how dangerous that can be.

Is this kata going to change the world? Of course not. But changing the world isn't always one big thing. Sometimes it's a lot of little things that people don't even notice.

"You can't make a fair comparison between some crudely-drawn frog meme and a symbol like a swastika which has significant historical context involving mass genocide on a global scale."

Sure I can - I just did.

And the history of the swastika bing a symbol of hate is relatively new. It was a religous symbol spanning continents and thousands of years before that. True, Pepe doesn't have that history or the association with genocide, but that is an argument based on the logical fallacy of relative privation. Just because something isn't as bad as something else, doesn't mean that it can't be a point of concern. It's an argument of degrees, not absolutes.

And it is a fact that Pepe the Frog has become associated with the alt-right and is rallying symbol of the alt-right. It has been declared a hate symbol by watchdog groups.

"Actually, what racism needs in order to thrive is hatred of other races."

No, that's what it needs to exist. To thrive it needs ignorance and apathy. There's an old saying that, "What allowed Nazi Germany needed wasn't a country of antisemites but a country full of people that were indifferent to antisemitism."

You know, if I wrote a kata and someone told me, "hey, you're referencing something that is a hate symbole to many people" - I would not hesitate, not even for a second to change it. It wouldn't even occur to me not to. I certainly wouldn't sit here and defend it. I would just change it. Especially, since this reference is completely gratuitous and has nothing to do with the actual coding problem. Nothing.

I wonder what people sould say if I did a swastika themed kata?

This is one of the things alt-right trolls do for fun - they try to slip these things past unsuspecting people. Right now, a racist right wing troll is laughing his ass off that he got a bunch of nerds to unknowingly write programs about their favorite racism icon.

But I guess I'm the only one that cares. But that's what racism needs to thrive - ignorance and apathy. It's another thing I am growing to hate about the internet.

There was nothing inherently hateful about a swastika or a burning cross either. (The swastika in particular was a religous symbol going back thousands of years.) They became hate symbols because they were used by hate groups as a symbol to express racist ideals. For a couple of years now it has become a symbol of hate for alt-right and nativist movements. It is now listed by groups like the Anti-Defimation League as hate symbol and is rampant in hate group intenet exchanges, having been adopted as a symbol.

That is how hate symbols evolve. I guess people don't care. That's sad.

Of course, Pepe the frog is now considered a hate symbol.

First of all, who ever translated this to JS should have changed the line "...and returns a list of its multiples" - we don't have "lists" in JS, we have arrays.

Many people have pointed out the problem with the line "The limit will always be higher than the base." Of course the randomized tests yield examples where the base is higher than the limit.

I would also point out that it will sometimes return examples where they are equal.

The word duplicate has to do with there being "two" of something. It should be changed to "multiple copies".

This is 8 kyu?

I'm so tired of "gotcha" katas - katas with a simple enough description and simple enough initial tests and then you get wollopped on final test because it involves extremes not hinted at in the kata description or the initial tests.

The kata description should have mentioned that extremely large numbers (beyond JS's abilities) and should have hinted at the mathematical trick needed to solve it. This is supposed to be a test in coding, not obscure math theory (I studied engineering with more than two years of calculus and I had to stretch my memory to remember this chestnut.) The other problem is that in certain boundry conditions this would fail. This trick is not not lossless - if two of the compared numbersh happen to be close enough, they will read as false. You can't encode 100 bits of number into a 64 bit data type and not loose some precision. It only will work if the numbers are far enough apart to distinguish themselves over the loss of resolution.