Neopets is launching a comeback that it says will start a “new era” for the virtual pet website. The site was launched in 1999 and became one of the most popular and beloved parts of the early internet. Players were able to look after cartoon pets as well as playing games and chatting with other users. Its popularity led it to boast some 25 million users in the 2000s, at a time before the launch of major social networks. Since then it has fallen dramatically, and many parts of the site have broken as technology has moved on. Now the game is under the management of a new leadership team that has promised to “breathe fresh life into Neopia”, the virtual world in which the game’s characters live. “For most of the last decade, the The Neopets Team [TNT] has been under the management of JumpStart Games, which, over time, has struggled to find success for Neopets,” the team wrote in a long blog post. “Beset by ageing site features, a waning user base, and a lack of resources, TNT had to work tirelessly just to barely keep the site afloat. “The resources available to us simply weren’t substantial enough to sustain the level of growth and development that the site needed to keep up with the times, resulting in bugs, unconverted pages, broken games, and a lack of new content. Despite these challenges, TNT pushed onward, guided by an unwavering belief that this iconic brand that has meant so much to so many truly deserved better.” The new version of the site will launch this week, the team said. It wil included updated games: many of the playable parts of the site broke with the demise of Adobe Flash, but the team has committed to updating them and bringing them back to be played. The team also said that they would be introducing new games, including a mobile game called World of Neopets. That is a “social life-simulation game”, the team said, and it will be distinct from the crypto, metaverse and NFT-focus that has come to the site in recent times. Through the 2000s, Neopets was one of the internet’s most popular websites, and in 2005 it was bought by Viacom for $160 million. But in the years that followed it was beset by problems, and was sold again to JumpStart Games in 2014. That era was marked by a range of problems, including technical issues and data breaches that led to people’s passwords being stolen. In recent years, many parts of the site have been left broken. JumpStart Games shut down at the end of June. But a new management team has struck a deal to buy the website and its contents and the new team will be led by Dominic Law, who played the games in the 2000s. Read More Powerful solar flare to disrupt communications, Russians warn ChatGPT rival with ‘no ethical boundaries’ sold on dark web Watch: James Cleverly chairs UN meeting on artificial intelligence

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If the thought of jetting off to Mars to live doesn’t scare you enough, imagine what it would be like going with people whose personalities you cannot stand. To avoid that happening, scientists have come up with a simulation that can determine the right and, importantly, wrong, personality types to send up to colonize Mars. 28 different simulations of colonies on Mars were run as part of the study to establish which type of people stood the best chance of settlement and survival. While the study was published on pre-print server arXiv, it had not yet been peer-reviewed. The study worked on the assumption that there would already be some kind of infrastructure in place, including power, food, air and water being locally produced and available. As part of the model, there would also be regular supply deliveries from Earth. Those behind the simulation gave each agent their own attributes, skills and personalities and let the simulation run as they interacted, socialised and problem-solved together. In the paper, the researchers explained: “Each agent is granted skills associated with their civilian and military occupational specialities consistent with NASA’s Human Factors and Behavioral Performance Element research.” Different personality types included: “Agreeables” – they score low on levels of competitiveness and aggression. “Neurotics” – these people are highly aggressive, competitive, and are much less able to handle routine change or boredom. “Reactives” – they tend to have a “competitive interpersonal orientation”. “Socials” – people who are extroverted and require a lot of social interaction. As for the groups themselves, the numbers within each simulation differed with the lowest amount being 22 individuals. The study found that the presence of neurotics made the team have a worse chance of survival and that these people in particular “suffered during life on the colony”. The researchers: “Martians with the neurotic psychology and a high coping capacity benefit the least from interaction with other Martians, and are penalized the most if they have a low coping capacity. “Our results suggest that this effect is a driver of the Martian population decline, and once minimized or removed, can produce a stable settlement.” A lot to process there if you identify as neurotic. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger said the chipmaker is on course to hit its third-quarter forecasts,

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Student-loan relief advocates are pressing President Joe Biden to find other ways to forgive college debts after the