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.

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.

The global cyber threat landscape was defined by fragmentation in 2025, driven in no small part by widening geopolitical fractures that threatened the 80-year-old rules-based international order that has kept the peace – at least in the global north – since the end of the Second World War, according to a report.

In a cyber threat report published last week, Recorded Future’s Insikt Group explored how the conduct of powerful nations – aptly demonstrated by the possibility of a unilateral US takeover of Greenland, threatening the integrity of the Nato alliance – is causing knock-on effects in the cyber world as long-standing security frameworks appear increasingly precarious.

Indeed, in some circumstances, legal ambiguity around US actions, particularly those taking place in the Caribbean and Venezuela, has in fact caused some of America’s core allies, including the UK, to restrict intelligence sharing. Recorded Future said that strained transatlantic relations were limiting coordinated responses to wider crises such as Russia’s four-year war on Ukraine, and that these geopolitical dynamics are directly shaping state behaviour in cyberspace.

Meanwhile, sustained law enforcement pressure led to some big wins last year in the form of disruptions and takedowns of cyber criminal infrastructure, along with arrests, but this is now resulting in a more decentralised, modular criminal ecosystem that, unfortunately, is also more resilient.

And on the technological front, this fragmentation was demonstrated by the growing split between China and the US as the two great powers vie for AI dominance.

“In 2025, Insikt Group tracked how cyber activity shifted from a primary focus on espionage toward increased use of cyber capabilities for signalling, coercion and disruption in both kinetic conflicts and grey-zone scenarios,” said the report’s authors.

“Securing access to identity systems, cloud environments and edge infrastructure emerged as a central feature of interstate competition, reflecting the growing strategic value of persistent digital access and pre-positioning.

“Disruption was equally visible in the information environment. Insikt Group observed hacktivist groups, patriotic volunteers and influence networks playing a growing role in conflicts involving Israel-Iran, India-Pakistan, Thailand-Cambodia, and Russia-Ukraine.

“These actors operated with varying degrees of state alignment, but consistently contributed to a threat landscape in which genuine intrusions, exaggerated claims and disinformation reinforced one another,” they said.

Speaking at the report’s launch at the annual Munich Security Conference in Germany, Recorded Future chief security and intelligence officer Levi Gundert said: “Uncertainty is no longer episodic – it’s the operating environment.

“As geopolitical norms weaken, state objectives, criminal capability and private-sector technology are increasingly reinforcing one another, compressing warning timelines and expanding plausible deniability. AI is accelerating that dynamic, not through autonomous attacks, but by scaling deception and eroding trust inside decision-making processes.

“In 2026, cyber risk will be defined less by singular events and more by persistent, fragmented pressure that reshapes competition, escalation, and stability over time.”