Another fake news website has emerged. It's in the same mold as cnn-internationaledition.com and cnn-globalnews.com.
This latest website is www.abcnews-us.com. Today, it printed a story alleging that Warren Buffet has significantly invested in bitcoin. The story also ran an alleged quote from an interview Buffet gave to the Financial Times. Here's an archive of that story: http://archive.is/eTmvh.
I could not find any news stories mentioning that Warren Buffet had recently invested in bitcoin. The only such "source" for this news is abcnews-us.com.
I'm not sure yet who controls abcnews-us.com. The WhoIs record from RegistryDB.com indicates the domain was registered by "Scott Lee," using the e-mail address bigstack1000@gmail.com. The About page for abcnews-us.com is simply a copy-and-paste from a different fake news site called the Jackson Telegraph. All that being said, it sure seems like whoever runs abcnews-us.com is a bitcoin fan, right?
A Deadline article claimed that Netflix had removed Kevin Spacey's image from the House of Cards title card:
Spacey’s image is absent from the main menu, which now features a title card with Robin Wright’s Claire Underwood sans husband. (Oddly enough, the actress is striking an identical pose as her next-door menu neighbor, BoJack Horseman.)
The article has been removed, but I saved a cached version here: http://archive.is/ZzlWj. My hunch is that the author, Greg Evans, read way too much into an inconsequential graphic. In fact, when I log onto Netflix, the title card for House of Cards still shows Kevin Spacey back-to-back with Robin Wright:
An anonymous commenter added this:
Greg, sweetheart. Netflix changes it’s title boxes sometimes multiple times a day. The fact that Spacey isn’t shown in the title box right this minute doesn’t mean he won’t be tonight or tomorrow. By the way, last I checked, the title box for House of Cards showed Spacey and Wright standing back to back. Let’s not allow hysteria and paranoia to get the best of us, shall we?
Moral of the story: Don't leap to silly conclusions.
I really enjoyed M. Night Shyamalan's two most-recent films: The Visit and Split. And I'm looking forward to his next film, Glass. (Hopefully we get a resolution for Casey's side of the story.)
It seems like M. Night Shymalan has returned to form after several years in the critics' doghouse. But one this that hasn't returned is his interactive website: www.MNightShyamalan.com. Any time I visit, it gives me an error message.
The website launched in 2009, and the whole thing was like a cryptic haunted house. You could explore different rooms and, um, learn about M. Night's career. Here's a screencast showing how it used to look:
It's November 2nd, and I haven't seen any chatter lately about Semanal Media or the sale of LA Weekly.
I noticed back on October 18th that the domain "SemanalMedia.com" was registered to a guy named Richard Flores in Huntington Beach. My immediate thought was that Flores was camping the domain. However, when I sent him a joking e-mail to congratulate him on purchasing LA Weekly, he responded: "???" That wasn't the type of response I expected.
It appears Flores registered a bunch of other domains in addition to SemanalMedia.com. I can't draw any conclusions from this list, but perhaps somebody else can?
October 17:
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12:52 PM: SmackOff24.com was registered to Richard Flores.
12:52 PM: SmackOff25.com was registered to Richard Flores.
7:02 PM: TheLALadyShow.com was registered to Richard Flores.
7:02 PM: TheLAWomanShow.com was registered to Richard Flores.
7:02 PM: TheLAWeeklyShow.com was registered to Richard Flores.
October 18:
3:52 PM: The news breaks on LABusinessJournal.com that LA Weekly was sold to Semanal Media.
9:14 PM: SemanalMedia.com was registered to Richard Flores. Within a few hours, the WhoIs information would be edited, and it now shows the domain was registered to "Domains By Proxy."
I already know the significance of the first two domains. The "Smack Off" is an annual competition for fans of The Jim Rome Show. Sports Illustrated covered this year's contest, and summed it up this way:
In the "Smack Off," callers from across the country are pitted against each other in a pseudo-battle rap format in hopes of winning Rome’s approval, taking home a $5,000 cash prize and, most importantly of all, claiming a year’s worth of bragging rights.
I don't think Flores works for Jim Rome or for CBS. He's just really into these competitions. Flores previously registered www.SmackOff22.com and www.SmackOff23.com, and neither site was ever utilized. He also registered www.CloneOnClone.com in 2013, and it seems he was trying to pitch an idea for a TV segment to Jim Rome and/or Showtime:
My guess is that Flores registered the other eight domains in anticipation that they might be valuable to someone later on. I don't know if there's a direct connection between his decision to register TheLAWeeklyShow.com and his decision to register SemanalMedia.com.
Maybe someone is planning to create a show under the LA Weekly brand?
Random notes:
1.) This was my attempt to screenshot the WhoIs information for SemanalMedia.com with Fireshot, before it was changed: https://imgur.com/a/yuKQ4
2.) The domain SemanalDigital.com was both droppedandregistered on October 18th. I checked various registry sites, but can't figure out who owned the domain in the days leading up to October 18th. Furthermore, it was registered by some domain-parking service called DonDominio, and my impression is that DonDominio just snatched it up randomly because it happened to be available.
