Tired of listening to crying babies and engines whirring on your flights? Our favorite pair of wireless headphones for traveling are currently marked down by $50. You can pick up the Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 from Amazon for just $399 in both Black and Driftwood Sand, with the other colors remaining at their full price.

Bose is known for incredible active noise canceling, and the latest generation of QuietComfort over-ear headphones is no different. Our reviewer Ryan Waniata was extremely impressed with the Bose, despite only minor upgrades, and considers them among the top three headsets when it comes to ANC, rivaled only by Sony’s WH-1000XM6 and Bose’s first-generation QuietComfort Ultra. The transparency mode is truly excellent as well, for when you need to keep an ear on your surroundings or even have a chat with someone without turning down the Steely Dan.

Speaking of, these are still a great pair of headphones for listening to music, even if you don’t need the noise-canceling. They have a sharp level of detail and crisp texture, although they benefited from a little softening in the EQ to help cut some of that extra punchiness. Of course, most headsets sound better with some silence in the background, but these won’t disappoint, particularly if you like bigger, more vibrant sound.

While some of the QuietComfort’s features haven’t changed, Bose has made a variety of convenience updates to make these more usable when you aren’t settled into your window seat. They now feature an automatic idle mode, so you can just put them down flat on any surface to disconnect and move to low power mode, with the headset automatically reconnecting when you put them on. They have slightly better battery life than the previous generation, around 30 hours with ANC on, and you can keep listening while they charge if they do run low on juice. You can even listen to lossless audio over USB-C, a unique feature to this headset in the category.

The $399 price tag for the Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 might sound high, but they’re among our favorite wireless headsets, and the cost is just $20 higher than the all-time low, making them a great upgrade choice, even for first-generation owners.

Lumen Technologies has expanded its enterprise networking portfolio with a Multi-Cloud Gateway (MCGW) and enhanced metro datacentre connectivity across major US markets.

Through its expansion, Lumen claimed to be simplifying connectivity, removing the complexity from how data moves across hybrid environments by bringing centralised multicloud routing and high-capacity private metro connectivity. The result is a more consistent, controllable networking foundation for artificial intelligence (AI) and other modern workloads.

Commenting on the state of the modern workplace and the effect AI is having, Courtney Munroe, vice-president of worldwide telecommunications research at analyst firm IDC, noted that AI was reshaping network design, pushing enterprises to move from experimentation to execution with architectures that reduce latency, cost variability and operational complexity.

“As workloads become more distributed and performance sensitive, organisations are rethinking how they connect edge sites, datacentres and multiple clouds, and Lumen’s network fabric shows how programmable networks can deliver more consistent data movement,” he commented.

Lumen believes its enhanced products and services can improve business agility by accelerating data movement across cloud and enterprise environments, so analytics keep pace with changing demand.

The Multi-Cloud Gateway is the core element of the shift to cloud-based telecoms, built as a software-defined, self-service routing layer on Lumen’s global fibre network. It is said to provide private, high-capacity connectivity among enterprises, hyperscalers and emerging cloud platforms, turning traditional telecoms interconnection into a programmable cloud fabric.

By unifying connectivity, routing and policy, Lumen is confident that MCGW can reduce operational complexity, speed time to service and lower the total cost of ownership. That is, it can allow customers to connect dynamically cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-enterprise environments, optimise traffic for performance and cost, and support advanced use cases such as AI workload distribution and real-time data exchange.

Alongside this, it has built Metro Ethernet and IP Services to offer expanded high-capacity, dedicated connectivity across 16 US markets, delivering up to 100Gbps between regional datacentres, campuses and edge locations, and up to 400Gbps at key cloud datacentres in those markets. Lumen said this would deliver fast, secure movement of massive datasets for AI training, analytics, replication and disaster recovery.

Recently upgraded markets include Northern Virginia, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York City and Seattle.

Explaining why the enhancements and launches matter for enterprises, Lumen said networks shift from constraint to enabler, so organisations can move faster, scale with confidence and unlock greater innovation. It added that the business impact is immediate and practical for industries scaling their AI ambitions, citing use in financial services, retail, healthcare and manufacturing.

In finance, it said firms can keep risk, payments and fraud workloads synchronised across multiple clouds, with centralised policy control for lower latency and more predictable performance. Retailers, it said, can now improve business agility by accelerating data movement across cloud and enterprise environments, so analytics keep pace with changing demand.

Healthcare use cases are now seen as being able to maintain data separation, support telehealth services, imaging and analytics, disaster recovery, and manage research workloads across institutions and resource centres. Manufacturers are said to be able to connect regional facilities and cloud environments to enable real-time analytics and predictive maintenance.

“Moving data across hybrid environments is a lot like managing air traffic – you need clear routes, predictable timing and the ability to adjust when conditions change. Most legacy networks weren’t built for that level of coordination,” remarked Lumen chief technology and product officer Jim Fowler.

“With our expanded network fabric, [we aim to give] enterprises a way to move data securely, effortlessly and consistently across clouds, datacentres and edge locations, designed to reduce the complexity that holds AI-driven operations back.”

Every day, people log in to an online forum for current and former Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officers to share their thoughts on the news of the day and complain about their colleagues in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“ERO is too busy dressing up as Black Ops Commandos with Tactical body armor, drop down thigh rigs, balaclavas, multiple M4 magazines, and Punisher patches, to do an Admin arrest of a non criminal, non-violent EWI that weighs 90 pounds and is 5 foot 2, inside a secure Federal building where everyone has been screened for weapons,” wrote one user in July 2025. (ERO stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations; along with HSI, it’s one of the two major divisions of ICE and is responsible for detaining and deporting immigrants.)

The forum describes itself as a space for current and prospective HSI agents, “designed for the seasoned HSI Special Agent as well as applicants for entry level Special Agent positions.” HSI is the division within ICE whose agents are normally responsible for investigating crimes like drug smuggling, terrorism, and human trafficking.

In the forum, users discuss their discomfort with the US’s mass deportation efforts, debate the way federal agents have interacted with protesters and the public, and complain about the state of their working conditions. Members have also had heated discussions about the shooting of two protesters in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the ways immigration enforcement has taken place around the US.

The forum is one of several related forums where people working in different parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) share experiences and discuss specific details of their work. WIRED previously reported on a forum where current and former deportation officers from ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) similarly complained about their jobs and discussed the way the agency was conducting immigration raids. The HSI forum appears to be linked, even including some of the same members.

People do not need to show proof of their employment to join these forums, and the platform does not appear to be heavily moderated. WIRED has not confirmed the individual identities of these posters, though they share details that likely would be known only to people intimately familiar with the job. There are more than 2,000 members with posts going back to at least 2004.

DHS and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

Following the killings of both Good and Pretti, the forum’s members were heavily divided. In a January 12 thread, five days after Good was shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, a poster who has been a part of the forum since 2016 wrote, “IMHO, the situation with ICE Operations have gotten to an unprecedented level of violence from both the Suspects and the General Public. I hope the AG is looking at the temporary suspension of Civil Liberties, (during and in the geographic locales where ICE Operations are being conducted).”

A user who joined the forum in 2018 and identifies as a recently retired agent responded, “This is an excellent idea and well warranted. These are organized, well financed civil disturbances, dare I say an INSURRECTION?!?”

In a January 16 post titled “The Shooting,” some posters took a more nuanced view. “I get that it is a good shoot legally and all that, but all he had to do was step aside, he nearly shot one of his partners for Gods sake!” wrote a poster who first joined the forum in March 2022. “A USC woman non-crim shot in the head on TV for what? Just doesn’t sit well with me … A seasoned SRT guy who was able to execute someone while holding a phone seems to me he could have simply got out of the way.” SRT refers to ICE’s elite special response team, who undergo special training to operate in high-risk situations. USC refers to US citizens.