Video games are more technologically sophisticated than ever these days — virtual reality headsets, augmented reality integration, and some of the most powerful and realistic graphics yet. At the end of the day, a good, innovative video game needs one important element. According to industry veteran Reggie Fils-Aimé, former President of Nintendo America, it’s simply to make the game good and fun. Fils-Aimé retired in 2019 but reflects on these ideas and his history of disrupting the gaming sector in his new autobiography, “Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo.” Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with him about where the innovation is happening in gaming right now. He says you just need to look at who’s creating those fun interactions.

The European Union is pushing to regulate big, global technology firms. In their latest move, EU negotiators agreed to a broad set of legislation called the Digital Services Act, which aims to, among a long list of other items, require social media companies to make their algorithms more transparent and limit the spread of disinformation on their platforms. While the language in the DSA still needs to be finalized, it seems clear that platforms like Twitter — regardless of who owns it — will need to adapt to those rules. Eric Heinze is a professor of law and humanities at Queen Mary University of London. He spoke with Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams about how strict these EU rules will be and what they mean for Elon Musk’s vision for Twitter.

This week, Apple rolled out its Self-Service Repair Store. Consumers and independent shops can now order spare parts and rent company-authorized tools to fix certain iPhones. This comes after President Joe Biden issued an executive order in July promoting consumers’ “right to repair” their own electronics. Congress is considering new laws to make it easier for people to fix their stuff. That’s the topic today for our recurring segment, “Quality Assurance,” where we take a second look at a big tech story. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Nathan Proctor, who directs the Right to Repair Campaign for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Twitter users and investors have been trying to guess what’s ahead for the social media platform since the company agreed to a $44 billion buyout from Tesla and SpaceX CEO — and Twitter superuser — Elon Musk. Musk has praised Twitter as an important platform for public discourse and says he plans to make it better by cracking down on bot accounts, increasing transparency around its algorithms and making it a more free speech-friendly space. But what happens when that free speech happens to be false speech? Emily Dreyfuss, a journalist and senior editor at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, spoke to Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams about how the change of ownership, which is subject to regulatory approval, could affect Twitter’s attempts to crack down on misinformation.

Contrary to what you might have seen in the Rock’s movie “San Andreas,” we still can’t predict earthquakes. But there have been recent advances in seismology assisted by artificial intelligence. Researchers at Stanford used a deep-learning algorithm to detect more earthquakes in cities by filtering out the normal noise and vibrations of urban life. And a group at Penn State used machine learning to analyze simulated fault movements in the lab and look for indicators that could help predict an impending quake. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Egill Hauksson, a research professor of geophysics at Caltech, who said these tools can give us a fuller understanding of earthquake patterns.

Twitter officially accepted a buyout offer from Elon Musk on Monday valued at $44 billion. Musk is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, the richest person in the world and has been described as something of a memelord on Twitter. He’s praised the platform as a bastion of free speech but he has some ideas to make it … more free: more transparency about the algorithm, maybe an edit button and less content moderation. What he’s not after, he’s said, is making money. Then he’s in the right place, says Amy Webb, a futurist and founder of the Future Today Institute.

There are two long-standing trends in the tech industry that have intensified over the last couple years: there are more jobs than workers to fill them, and there’s a need to diversify this workforce. More and more companies are rolling back degree requirements that were part of many job descriptions. Today, we’ll hear how that dynamic has given new opportunities to people like Stanley Omotuyole, who left Nigeria a couple of years ago, giving up a degree program in laboratory science to join his dad in Seattle.

Scraping data from public websites is legal. That’s the upshot of a decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week. LinkedIn had taken a case against data analytics company hiQ, arguing it was illegal for hiQ to “scrape” users’ profile data to analyze employee turnover rates under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Tiffany Li, a technology attorney and professor of law at the University of New Hampshire, joins our host Meghan McCarty Carino to talk about how the CFAA fits into today’s world.

Keeping tabs on groundwater is more important than ever. Most of the western United States is suffering the most extreme drought in 12 centuries, and climate change only promises to make things worse. Underground aquifers can provide lifelines for farmers and cities, but pumping them dry causes the earth to sag, which is called subsidence. This can create sinkholes and destroy infrastructure. But groundwater is hard to monitor; it’s sometimes located thousands of feet below the surface. That’s where satellites come in. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Kyra Kim, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where they’ve created a model to track groundwater levels using two satellite systems.

The internet can be a scary place for women, from mansplaining and unwanted advances to coordinated harassment campaigns, doxxing and physical threats. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Nina Jankowicz, author of a new book about this, “How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment, and How to Fight Back,” which comes out Thursday. Jankowicz says women are bearing most of the burden of fighting online trolls.