Shhh. When Hacker News links to something incomprehensible with no explanation, you're supposed to Google it yourself and then pretend you knew all along.
Or be like every news outlet out there and pretend this is a known and common term and just use in quotes.
All 10 articles I've seen about the VW thing, each and everyone of them used 'defeat device' in either double or single quotes without explaining what it is just that the EPA doesn't like it.
From autonews to the various posts and times and the editorials no one explained it.
Heck even Google doesn't really knows it, i found the explanation for this only in a site containing definitions for shipping (as in a Ship) terminologies.
