Cerf. (Wikipedia)

Vint Cerf is wishing the modern-day Internet a happy 30th birthday today. [Google]

Reddit had 37 billion page views and 400 million unique visitors in 2012. [Reddit]

If the New Year left your brain feeling like this GIF looks, we sympathize. [Daily Dot]

Here's a trend to watch for in 2013: Companies are pretending they want employees to spend some time away from their electronic devices. [NYT]

The new year will bring documentaries that aim to tell the history of Silicon Valley on public television. Again. [AllThingsD]

Lost in the hubbub over Hewlett-Packard's $8.8 billion loss on Autonomy was word in the company's 10-K—filed quietly during the last week of 2012—was a hint that CEO Meg Whitman may start spinning off businesses. [Bloomberg]

Did we mention that New York City's techies have New Year's resolutions? [Betabeat]

Lynch. (The Telegraph)

Ever since Hewlett-Packard delivered its bombshell allegations against Autonomy, the search engine maker that HP acquired for $11.1 billion last year, the dispute between the sides has fallen into a holding pattern: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch speaks, and HP doesn't.

To refresh your memory, HP said it was taking an $8.8 billion write-down on the value of Autonomy when the Silicon Valley giant announced third-quarter results on November 20. The reason for the massive loss on the newly acquired company? According to HP, accounting shenanigans at Autonomy led to an inflated valuation.

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch has been far more talkative. Since the day HP went public with its claims, Mr. Lynch has taken to a variety of platforms to deny charges that his company cooked the books, wonder aloud whether HP had targeted his old company as a means of distracting investors from disappointing results, and tell anyone who would listen that he'd yet to hear word number-one from HP regarding the allegations.

Today, the Autonomy founder told Bloomberg that he's yet to hear anything from HP regarding the crooked accounting claims, noting that he was initially informed of the allegations via text message.“We haven’t heard anything from anybody,” he told Bloomberg. “It’s a very strange way of doing things, but we’d love to hear more.”

Also: “Meg is so off of my Christmas card list this year,” he said.

Ms. Whitman. (Photo: Max Morse)

The nuts and bolts of HP's $11.1 billion acquisition of Autonomy are pretty wonky. But we know a good scandal when we see one, and this $8.8 billion loss and the whole "fraud" debacle are shaking up to be one for the record books.

After losing all that money, HP pointed the finger at its subsidiary, alleging that cooked books had made Autonomy appear more valuable than it really was. If the HP thought the former Autonomy team would go quietly into that good night, the Silicon Valley giant was sadley mistaken. Former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch has loudly maintained his innocence, and now Business Insider reports that he's started a blog to defend against the allegations.

The description:

This website is maintained by Dr Mike Lynch on behalf of the former management team of Autonomy. The site provides relevant information pertaining to the accusations made by Hewlett Packard (HP) on 20 November 2012 of financial impropriety at Autonomy. The former management team of Autonomy strongly rejects the accusations made by HP.

Thus far the blog is mostly placeholder, with an open letter to HP board dated November 27, an Autonomy timeline and the lengthiest legal notice we've ever seen outside of an iTunes terms of service agreement. But we're adding it to our RSS feed and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It's tough to say who to believe here, but one thing is for sure: This is just the latest chapter in the sad, sorry history of corporate scandals at Hewlett-Packard, a company's had its dirty laundry aired over and over again in the most public of possible arenas. The company has had, count 'em, seven CEOs since 1999. CEO Meg Whitman was supposed to be a clean break with a past involving rampant leaks to the press, sexual harassment and gross infighting on the company's board of directors.

Guess that's not working out so well.

Gotcha! (Photo: In the Capital)

The FTC is said to be wondering whether it can actually pull off an antitrust case against Google, as consumers don't seem too bothered by the company's putting its own services before those of competitors. [Bloomberg]

Facebook is testing adding upcoming events and recently released albums--not sponsored posts, but not shared by friends, either--to the News Feed. [The Next Web]

A government advisory committee has filed objections to many of ICANN's new top-level domains, from .islam to .wtf to .navy. [ZDNet]

HP says it's lost almost $9 billion on the purchase of Autonomy because of shady accounting. But there are doubts about whether that really adds up. [Bloomberg]

Now whirring away in the computing museum at England's Bletchley Park: the world's oldest working computer, dating from 1951. [Extreme Tech]

Lynch. (The Telegraph)

In the hours since Hewlett-Packard stunned investors by announcing an $8.8 billion loss on its acquisition of Autonomy, competing narratives have emerged to describe just what went wrong.

H-P spoke first, explaining that "accounting improprieties" and "outright misrepresentations" committed before it acquired the British search engine maker for $11.1 billion last year led to today's write-down. Former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch said that the deal was vetted by a small army of accountants and bankers, and that internal problems at the Silicon Valley giant are responsible for Autonomy's troubles.

Which one should you believe? Betabeat breaks it down.

What H-P said

In H-P 's telling, it agreed to pay too much for the British search engine maker back in August 2011, back when, ahem, the Silicon Valley giant was helmed by an executive, former CEO Leo Apotheker, who is no longer with the company. In that version, the little matter of "a willful effort on behalf of certain former Autonomy employees to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company in order to mislead investors and potential buyers" caused H-P to overvalue the company.

The claim that "certain employees" of Autonomy defrauded H-P and its shareholders is no small charge (and $8.8 billion isn't a small amount); CEO Meg Whitman promised to raise the hounds—U.S. and U.K. regulators, anyway—to make sure that the perpetrators of the apparent fraud are punished, and to pursue civil litigation against the people responsible for the fraud.

The Autonomy story

Former Autonomy CEO Mr. Lynch wasn't named anywhere in H-P's statement, but he's responded like a man on public trial, stressing to The Wall Street Journal that the deal went through a "meticulous" vetting process overseen by hundreds of auditors and bankers, then taking note that the H-P's announcement was "coincident with them releasing the worst set of results in their 70-year company history."

That wasn't all: Mr. Lynch stayed available, repeating his story ("it's completely and utterly wrong") to reporters from various outlets, and arguing that H-P abandoned Autonomy after Mr. Apotheker was forced out of the company and the software maker lost ground amid "petty infighting."

As far as which narrative to believe, at some point the proof will be in the pudding—H-P is said to have discovered the "accounting improprieties" (such a dainty way to explain away an $8.8 billion loss!) after an Autonomy executive blew the whistle, and we expect regulators and plaintiff's attorneys alike will be working hard to put some meat on the bones of H-P's claims.

The third party

In the meantime, it's worth noting that Jim Chanos, the Kynikos Associates hedge fund manager known for betting against Enron, seems to have been onto Autonomy for a while. Per Bloomberg:

Chanos, speaking at an investor conference in July, said Autonomy’s accounting was “dreadful,” and that Hewlett-Packard “did almost no due diligence” before acquiring the company. Chanos oversees $6 billion at Kynikos Associates Ltd.

And if we had to stake our life on the word of an army of faceless accountants pushing paper around under pressure from their client to complete a deal, or the conviction of a billionaire short-seller with skin in the game, we'd feel a lot safer going with the latter.

Whitman. (Photo: Max Morse)

Hewlett-Packard took an $8.8 billion charge against fourth-quarter earnings after uncovering "serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations" at Autonomy, the British software maker H-P acquired last year, the company said today.

That's a large loss by any measure, and looks all the uglier given that former CEO Leo Apotheker paid $11.1 billion for the search engine developer just last August in an attempt to compete in the enterprise software market. Drill down on the corporate speak—and set aside H-P's claim that it remains "100 percent committed” to Autonomy's "industry-leading technology"—and it sounds like the company simply bought a bill of goods:

As a result of that investigation, HP now believes that Autonomy was substantially overvalued at the time of its acquisition due to the misstatement of Autonomy’s financial performance, including its revenue, core growth rate and gross margins, and the misrepresentation of its business mix.

This appears to have been a willful effort on behalf of certain former Autonomy employees to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company in order to mislead investors and potential buyers. These misrepresentations and lack of disclosure severely impacted HP management’s ability to fairly value Autonomy at the time of the deal.

News of the write-down overshadowed generally disappointing results, in which revenue, operating margins and earnings per share declined. "Fiscal 2012 was the first year in a multiyear journey to turn H-P around,” CEO Meg Whitman said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Ms. Whitman said during a conference call this morning that the company has shared its findings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office. "H-P intends to seek regress against various parties in the appropriate civil courts to recoup what we can for our shareholders," she said.

Note: A previous version of this post reported that H-P acquired Autonomy for $10 billion. Currency fluctuations and other factors raised the price to $11.1B when the deal closed in October 2011.