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Rest assured, the EPA is not coming for your racing car. Besides, it was already illegal to remove the emissions equipment in the first place. (credit: Alex Bellus)

The Environmental Protection Agency is at the center of another controversy, this time with automotive racers and enthusiasts. At issue is a proposed rule that sounds to some like the EPA wants to ban anyone from turning a road car into a track-only toy or race car.

Last July, the EPA published a lengthy 629-page proposed rule called "Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Fuel Efficiency Standards for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Engines and Vehicles—Phase 2." Buried within the text was an amendment to an existing federal rule that reiterated Clean Air Act policy on road vehicles equipped with emissions controls. According to that rule, owners, operators, aftermarket companies, and service businesses may not tamper with or remove emissions equipment on vehicles so fitted, be they dedicated race cars or not.

The two-month window for public comments on the proposed rule came and went (closing on September 11, 2015) with little notice or fuss. But earlier this week, the Specialty Equipment Manufacturer's Association (SEMA) circulated a press release claiming that the "EPA Seeks to Prohibit Conversion of Vehicles Into Racecars." While this headline correctly assesses the EPA's position, it overstates the notion that anything has changed. Regardless, it inflamed passions in the racing and car enthusiast world in no time.

The US Internal Revenue Service was the target of a malware attack that netted electronic tax-return credentials for 101,000 social security numbers, the agency disclosed Tuesday.

Identity thieves made the haul by using taxpayers' personal data that was stolen from a source outside the IRS, according to a statement. The attackers then used an automated bot against an application on the IRS website that provides personal identification numbers for the electronic filing of tax returns. In all, the hackers made unauthorized queries against 464,000 social security numbers but succeeded against only 101,000 of them.

No personal information was obtained from the IRS systems. Agency officials are flagging the accounts of all affected taxpayers and plan to notify them by mail of the incident. The IRS is also working with other government agencies and industry partners to investigate the hack or stem its effects. The hack occurred last month.

Recently I began outgrowing my home file server. It's an older Mac Mini with 1TB of storage space, and though it has worked well enough for several years (and through more than one OS X Server review), it's not a great choice for someone who primarily uses it as a file server. It’s not as expandable as I'd like it to be, its Fusion Drive setup offers no redundancy, and as a general-purpose computer it is rendered unnecessary by the 27-inch 2012 iMac on my desk that's still happily humming away.

My first attempt to solve the problem was with a home NAS (or Network Attached Storage) unit, a basic model with just a couple of drive bays and the ability to run a handful of media and VPN server apps if necessary. I eventually settled on a Western Digital MyCloud EX2, a basic two-drive consumer NAS that I thought would satisfy my requirements. This model gave me 2TB of mirrored storage for just under $300. I actually really liked the box itself and WD’s browser-based management software, but the wimpy ARM processor was slowing down everything from file transfers to thumbnail loading, and that didn't fill me with confidence about its future-proofness.

At this point, I had a couple of options. I could spend more money on a better, faster NAS, one that wouldn't disappoint me with its performance. Or... I could go ahead and build my own, which would give me the flexibility to build basically whatever box I wanted. Inspired by our recent articles on building a living room gaming PC and a DIY router, I decided to take the more Ars option.