We have long known that NOx, and in particular NO2 – which form part of the discharge from car exhausts – are indirectly harmful.

To put that in context, PM2.5 prematurely killed an estimated 430,000 people in the 28 EU countries in 2012, according to the European Environment Agency.

When diesel is burned in an engine instead of petrol, more NOx is produced overall, and 70 per cent of the NOx produced is NO2, compared with only 10 to 15 per cent when petrol is burned.

Newspapers in Germany are reporting that Bosch (the company that supplies electronics to the auto industry) warned VW only to use the cheat mode internally back in 2007, and that a whistleblower tried to raise the alarm internally in 2011.

VW has lost its chairman, a big chunk of market value, and probably the trust of many customers.

Access to the Web is key to increasing quality of life, Zuckerberg added, saying it not only helps people communicate but can also help lift them from poverty.

Critics of these programs say the companies stand to benefit from expanding pools of people using their services, which primarily make money from advertising. Others complain the businesses are also trying to create de facto monopolies on Internet access.

Here was a simple aim at the heart of the top-secret program: Record the website browsing habits of “every visible user on the Internet.”

The mass surveillance operation — code-named KARMA POLICE — was launched by British spies about seven years ago without any public debate or scrutiny.

One system builds profiles showing people’s web browsing histories. Another analyzes instant messenger communications, emails, Skype calls, text messages, cell phone locations, and social media interactions. Separate programs were built to keep tabs on “suspicious” Google searches and usage of Google Maps.

Other websites listed as “sources” of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.’s Channel 4.

If it seems like major services have been crashing a lot lately and for extended periods, you're not imagining things. A cluster of crashes has plagued users of a wide variety of high-profile cloud services in the past month.

There's nothing magical about the cloud. "The cloud" is just somebody else's computers located somewhere else. All the problems that exist in one's own data-center can exist within the cloud services.

The cloud comes with a certain degree of helplessness.

Released on Tuesday, Firefox 41 for the desktop now offers a built-in instant messaging feature via the browser's Firefox Hello feature. Introduced last October, Firefox Hello lets you initiate free video or audio chats with fellow Firefox users.

Mozilla continues to try to enhance Firefox with each new version. But the browser has seen better days in terms of overall use.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is trying to turn copyright law on its head: in this instance, with the mug of a macaque monkey named Naruto, whose selfies went viral and have been seen around the world.

Last month, a New York state court ruled against two chimpanzees represented by the Nonhuman Rights Project that claimed they were being deprived of their civil liberties while being housed at a university research facility.

The suit demands a San Francisco judge not only grant the copyright to the monkey, but wants an order permitting PETA to "administer and protect Naruto's rights in the Monkey Selfies on the condition that all proceeds from the sale, licensing, and other commercial uses of the Monkey Selfies, including Defendants' disgorged profits, be used solely for the benefit of Naruto, his family and his community, including the preservation of their habitat...."

Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill last month, shortly after purchasing the rights to the drug from Impax Laboratories.

The patents behind the drug -- all granted between 1951 and 1954 -- should be dead. Conveniently for Turing (and other rights holders before it), no company is offering a generic version.

Turing, of course, realizes this price jump -- which puts one month's supply in the new vehicle range ($45-50,000) at minimum -- is going to be tough on those expected to pay for it, but claims to have support in place to help absorb some of the ridiculous increase.

This huge price jump has more to do with the man running Turing, Martin Shkreli. Shkreli doesn't have a background in pharmaceuticals, but he does know how to run a hedge fund. And he's used this expertise to become highly-unpopular very quickly.

Amazon's Web Services (AWS) have been hit by a monster outage affecting the company's cloudy systems, bringing many sites down with it in the process.

Amazon said it was recovering from the database blunder, but as part of the fix the company was forced to throttle APIs to recover the service.

A sophisticated software algorithm on certain Volkswagen vehicles detects when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, and turns full emissions controls on only during the test.

This results in cars that meet emissions standards in the laboratory or testing station, but during normal operation, emit nitrogen oxides, or NOx, at up to 40 times the standard.