Hasta La Gadget!

Google’s Timeline feature isn’t new and has been around for quite a while now, but for iOS users who have been hoping to see native support for the feature on their devices will be pleased to learn that Google has updated Google Maps where the app will now be able to display the feature within the app itself.

Prior to this, iOS users who wanted to see their Google Maps Timeline had to log into their account via the web and access it from there, which meant that it wasn’t exactly the most convenient feature around. However with this update it will be as easy as swiping right from the Google Maps app to pull up the menu and accessing the feature.

For those unfamiliar, Timeline is a Google Maps feature that basically tracks your movements ad shows you where you’ve been. While we suppose it is a bit creepy and a bit invasive, note that the feature can always be disabled. However Google touts the feature as more of a memory tool where you can use it to find out where you were last week, the name of the restaurant you were at, and so on.

Whether or not you agree with that assessment is up to you, but in any case the update and feature should already be live, so update your Google Maps app if you want to check it out.

Google Maps For iOS Now Supports Timeline , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

A handset said to be the upcoming iteration of the Samsung Galaxy J5 has leaked in a pair of phones, one showing the back of the handset and the other showing the rear of the phone with the panel removed. This leak follows the phone’s appearance via the Wi-Fi Alliance and FCC, stoking hopes that we’ll see the handset make … Continue reading

A Silicon Valley woman who allegedly suffered a decade of physical abuse at the hands of her CEO husband has offered up a heartbreaking account of her experience.

In a victim impact statement read aloud in court last week, Neha Rastogi, a former engineer for Apple and Cisco, described what she said was a nightmare marriage to Abhishek Gattani, CEO of the Silicon Valley startup Cuberon.

“He hit me, multiple times during each incident on my face, arms, head, belly, pulled my hair and abused me and called me a bitch, whore, slut, bastard and much more in my language,” she wrote. She accused Gattani of beating her while she was pregnant and forcing her to stand for long periods of time as a form of punishment.

As The Daily Beast originally reported, Gattani was arrested twice for assaulting his wife ― once in 2013 and again in 2016 ― and is awaiting sentencing for the most recent incident. He pleaded no contest to offensive touching and felony accessory after the fact, and under a pending plea deal offered to him by prosecutors, he would only spend 30 days behind bars. A judge is expected to formally sentence him next month.

Experts say the short sentence offered to Gattani is not surprising. Lenient sentences are given all the time to domestic abusers, especially in cases where the victim does not have severe, life-threatening injuries. But with her statement, Rastogi has pinpointed the frustrations so many domestic violence victims have with the system.

“What’s the point of me speaking up now?” she said to the courtroom. “I get heard to be ignored? To be told that the system understands the abuse and the impact it has had on our child and me, but sorry ― it is what it is?”

Rastogi’s four-page victim impact statement describes the effects of her husband’s abuse, and her ongoing disappointment with the criminal justice system’s lack of substantial response to her plight. She said she feels she’s been “effectively silenced” twice ― first by her husband and then again by the system meant to protect her.

By coincidence, the courthouse in Santa Clara, California, where Rastogi spoke is the same one where Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. His victim’s poignant impact statement went viral and led to national outrage over lenient sexual assault sentencing.

Kim Gandy, CEO of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said she hoped Rastogi’s statement would have the same impact.   

“She described a decade of physical, verbal, emotional, and financial abuse that would outrage the hardest heart, but would not surprise those of us working in the domestic violence field,” Gandy said. “The minuscule sentence, the judge and prosecutor’s preoccupation with the abuser’s work and status, and the disregard for the safety of this victim whose life has been clearly and repeatedly threatened, reflect a denial of reality and a deep disregard for women’s lives.”

Ruth Glenn, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, wondered if Gattani’s considerable social status may have played a role in the sentencing.

“We also see quite frequently that money, power and privilege in our society is a free ticket for less accountability,” she said. “More than a few instances of high-profile domestic violence perpetrators have received lighter sentences than their less-than-high-profile counterparts.”

Maureen Curtis, vice president for Safe Horizon’s criminal justice and court programs, said the criminal justice system is designed to respond to specific incidents of physical violence, not patterns of abusive behavior. The focus on eruptions of physical violence can miss the bigger picture of the terror present inside a home, she explained. 

She pointed to the concept of coercive control, a pattern of verbal and psychological maltreatment that abusers use to dominate their partners. Many elements of coercive control, such as “isolating a victim, obsessive behavior, harassing or threatening, [and] threatening to take the children, is often not criminal behavior in most, if not all states,” Curtis said. “It does the most damage, and is the most terrifying, to victims and children who live in those homes.”

Rastogi, for her part, characterized the abuse she suffered as “terrorism.” 

“That’s how I felt ― terrorized and controlled, held hostage by the fear of pain, humiliation and assault on my being and my daughter’s,” she said in her statement last week.

She said Gattani encouraged her to commit suicide and threatened to kill her. He blamed her for feeling scared and unsafe with him, she said, and called her mental state a “self-inflicted depression.” Experts call this type of abuse “gaslighting,” a psychological tactic that causes victims to doubt their feelings and question their own sanity.

Rastogi said she is speaking out because she believes her husband will abuse other people unless he receives appropriate punishment. 

Anger management classes can’t help a man “who doesn’t think he did anything wrong when he HIT and ABUSED others to control them, once someone escapes their guilt the only thing that stops them is serious consequences ― which is a rightful conviction,” she wrote. “I can almost confirm he will do the same again.”

Gattani is expected back in court on May 18 for sentencing.

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30-year-old Jon Ossoff is vying to avoid a runoff in today’s special election — typical snowflake Millennial thinking his election is special. It turns out that claims about “Trump’s armada” — which already sounded like a misguided branding partnership he undertook with in the 1980s — were false. And Trump signed “buy American” legislation, and we don’t know how the Trump Organization will survive. This is HUFFPOST HILL for April 18th, 2017:

VOTERS HEADING TO POLLS IN GA-6 SPECIAL ELECTION –  What the polls are saying: “HuffPost Pollster’s average puts Ossoff at just below 43 percent, with surveys from both parties this month giving him a share of the vote ranging from 39 to 45 percent. As Enten notes, even with undecided voters proportionately allocated between the candidates, that leaves him several points shy of the 50 percent needed for an outright win.” [HuffPost Pollster]

From Eliot’s dispatch on the race: “Once upon a time, Georgia’s 6th Congressional District might have flickered into your mind while you contemplated the Republican electorate. Suburban and white, this collection of affluent commuter towns 45 minutes north of Atlanta is a maze of spiraling subdivisions, upscale retail stores and well-funded schools ― a veritable paradise of automatic sprinkler systems, Mercedes-Benz GLS-classes and C-suite types with names like Chet, Bobby and Judd…. Hostility to President Donald Trump and his populist message runs deep here. Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney won this district by over 20 points in 2012, yet Trump defeated his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton by a scant point in November, and it was Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) who carried it in the Republican primary.” [HuffPost]

Our prediction: Death comes for us all.

TRUMP SIGNS ‘HIRE AMERICA’ EXECUTIVE ORDER – Glenn Thrush: “President Trump…signed an executive order on Tuesday authorizing studies and tweaks in government rules that could lead to restrictions on foreign technical workers. Mr. Trump said the order, signed at the sprawling Snap-on tool factory in Kenosha, Wis., was a way to ‘restore the American dream’ and a means to end the ‘theft of American prosperity,’ which he said had been brought on by low-wage immigrant labor. While the order represents a sweeping policy recalibration, the text — distributed in paper-clipped printouts to reporters traveling with the president — calls for a series of relatively modest steps, most of which could take months or even years to carry out. They include a requirement that federal agencies produce reports on changes to improve the H-1B visa program, under which companies recruit and hire 85,000 foreign workers annually, many of them in high-tech, industrial, medical and science fields.” [NYT]

THANK GOODNESS THERE’S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUMP AND CLINTON – Congratulations to the Rust Belt on getting its jobs back! Alan Gomez and David Agren: “Federal agents ignored President Trump’s pledge to protect from deportation undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children by sending a young man back to his native Mexico, the first such documented case, a USA TODAY examination of the new administration’s immigration policies shows. After spending an evening with his girlfriend in Calexico, Calif., on Feb. 17, Juan Manuel Montes, 23, who has lived in the U.S. since age 9, grabbed a bite and was waiting for a ride when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer approached and started asking questions…. Montes had left his wallet in a friend’s car, so he couldn’t produce his ID or proof of his DACA status and was told by agents he couldn’t retrieve them. Within three hours, he was back in Mexico, becoming the first undocumented immigrant with active DACA status deported by the Trump administration’s stepped-up deportation policy.” [USA Today]

EMOLUMENTUM – Cristian Farias: “An ethics watchdog that sued President Donald Trump in January over violations of the so-called foreign emoluments clause of the Constitution has added new plaintiffs to its legal challenge — all in hopes of putting the case on stronger footing. The group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed an amended complaint in federal court on Tuesday that now lists as parties the Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a nonprofit restaurant coalition, and Jill Phaneuf, an event planner. Both ROC United and Phaneuf claim they’ve been directly harmed by a loss of business and wages related to the Trump Organization’s dealings with foreign governments that seek its patronage. Rather than seeking money damages from the president, Phaneuf ― who liaises with embassies and other clients seeking to do business with Washington-area hotels — and ROC United want a declaration from a federal judge that Trump’s ongoing ties to his own properties are unconstitutional.” [HuffPost]

Like HuffPost Hill? Then order Eliot’s book, The Beltway Bible: A Totally Serious A-Z Guide To Our No-Good, Corrupt, Incompetent, Terrible, Depressing, and Sometimes Hilarious Government

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NEXT THING YOU KNOW HE’LL SAY CHINA ISN’T A CURRENCY MANIPULATOR – Oh. Austin Wright: “President Donald Trump has yet to nominate the State Department official who oversees diplomatic security abroad — despite having made the 2012 Benghazi attacks a centerpiece of his campaign against Hillary Clinton. Congressional Democrats say it’s a striking omission that shows Trump’s campaign rhetoric was just that. And even some Republicans are urging Trump to move faster to fill this and other key State Department posts…. More than three dozen State Department leadership jobs remain unfilled, according to a tracker maintained by The Washington Post and the Partnership for Public Service — with hundreds of jobs requiring Senate confirmation sitting vacant across the federal government. A White House spokesman said career professionals are fulfilling positions as needed on an acting basis and cited “a deep bench” at the State Department.” [Politico]

FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT IVANKA TRUMP IS INCREDIBLY CORRUPT – And not just that nice lady moving the president to the center. Erika Kinetz and Annie D’Innocenzio: “On April 6, Ivanka Trump’s company won provisional approval from the Chinese government for three new trademarks, giving it monopoly rights to sell Ivanka brand jewelry, bags and spa services in the world’s second-largest economy. That night, the first daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, sat next to the president of China and his wife for a steak and Dover sole dinner at Mar-a-Lago…. As she crafts a political career from her West Wing office, her brand is flourishing, despite boycotts and several stores limiting her merchandise. U.S. imports, almost all of them from China, shot up an estimated 166 percent last year, while sales hit record levels in 2017. The brand, which Ivanka Trump still owns, says distribution is growing…. ‘Ivanka has so many China ties and conflicts, yet she and Jared appear deeply involved in China contacts and policy. I would never have allowed it,’ said Norman Eisen, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under Barack Obama.” [AP]

ACTUALLY, WE AREN’T SENDING ‘AN ARMADA’ – Paige Lavender and Eline Gordts: “When U.S. officials claimed two weeks ago that an American aircraft carrier was heading toward waters near North Korea, it was actually sailing in the opposite direction, The New York Times and Defense News report. Amid growing tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, U.S. Pacific Command announced on April 8 that the USS Carl Vinson strike group would sail north to the western Pacific after departing Singapore that day. An American official told Reuters at the time that the ships’ move toward the Korean Peninsula was a show of force directed at the regime of Kim Jong Un…Mere days after the announcement about the strike group’s new course, President Donald Trump weighed in on the North Korean threat. ‘We are sending an armada, very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier,’ Trump told Fox on April 12.” [HuffPost]

LIBERALS LOVE RICH PEOPLE, TOO! – Fenit Nirappil and Gregory S. Schneider: “Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam had almost twice as much campaign cash available as rival Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello two months ahead of the primary, according to data compiled Tuesday by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project…. Perriello’s haul was buoyed by several massive campaign contributions, with half of his money coming from four donors…. He launched his campaign on Jan. 5 with $500,000 from Sonjia Smith of Charlottesville, a major donor to Democrats in Virginia and nationwide, and $200,000 from Avaaz, an international nonprofit group that funds progressive activists and was co-founded by Perriello a decade ago. Philanthropist and liberal activist George Soros was his second-most generous contributor, at $250,000, and Soros’s son Alexander chipped in $125,000. New York financier Courtney Smith gave $75,000, while California philanthropist Stephen Silberstein donated $50,000.” [WaPo]

SUPER GRAFT-Y REPUBLICAN SOMEHOW NOT WORKING FOR TRUMP – Yet. Shane Goldmacher: “The Republican Party’s top digital strategist in 2016 got a nearly $1 million payout from a firm he co-founded that collected online contributions to the party and its nominee, Donald Trump — despite earlier claims that the strategist had severed his ties to the company. Gerrit Lansing’s joint roles, while legal, have raised questions of cronyism and profit-making at the Republican National Committee — and now sparked an internal review ‘to prevent a situation like this from happening again,’ the RNC told POLITICO in a statement…. The controversy puts White House press secretary Sean Spicer in an awkward spot. As the RNC’s chief strategist, Spicer denied to POLITICO in mid-2016 that Lansing had any financial stake in Revv.” [Politico]

HERE’S A THING THAT WON’T HAPPEN – This was already a stupid plot twist on what was already a terrible season of “The West Wing.” Allan Smith: “Chris Ruddy, a confidant of President Donald Trump, told Business Insider in a Monday interview that Trump should cut a deal with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. His proposition: Replace her on the bench with Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s choice to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s vacated seat in 2016. Ruddy, who wrote about his opposition to the Senate’s invoking the so-called nuclear option to help get Judge Neil Gorsuch confirmed to the Supreme Court, said Trump nominating Garland to the court would be a ‘huge move.’ ‘They would remove a very liberal Democrat with a moderate, consensus Democrat, who I think Garland is,’ Ruddy added. ‘And I think it would be a huge move and a sign for Trump that he’s willing to break through the political ice.’” [Business Insider]

BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR – Here’s an overjoyed dog.

TOM PEREZ DOESN’T GIVE A &#^$ WHAT YOU THINK OF HIS &*@$ING LANGUAGE – So shove it up your &#)*, you #@!*ing #^$#@)_!!!! David Weigel: “At the kickoff of a week-long tour with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez worked blue. Republicans, he told an audience in Maine, ‘don’t give a s— about the people they’re trying to hurt.’ The Trump administration’s ‘skinny budget’ was, in point of fact, a ‘s—ty budget.’ … ‘I’m always amused that Republicans feign indignation when they hear the word “s—” or “bulls—” out of Tom Perez, and they observe what Donald Trump has been saying for decades,’ Perez said…. ‘To compare what Donald Trump was doing to saying the word “s—” is unfair to the word “s—,”’ he said. ‘I mean, with all due respect, I don’t see the comparison there. The personal attacks, the collusion with the Russian government — to suggest that that’s somehow on par with using the word “s—”?’” [WaPo]

COMFORT FOOD

– Child builds intricate safe with LEGOs.

– Bartenders guess with people are over or under 21.

– History’s greatest bunt.

TWITTERAMA

Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com)

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A white diamond ring is classic, but there’s something so perfectly pretty about a pink stone ― be it a peach sapphire, morganite or a pink diamond. 

For those who’ve been eyeing a rose-colored ring, we’ve gathered 19 sparklers that are all but guaranteed to tickle you pink. 

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— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.