This is an article about them from 1997, about their origins.

Daft Punk have a reputation for being difficult that would shame Dave Clarke. They won’t have their photograph taken unless their faces are obscured. They ooze a bored hauteur onstage, barely moving, never smiling. They stormed out of a press conference at the prestigious Transmusicalles festival when someone asked them a “stupid” question. They sat in attitude-laden silence on the Heavenly Social tour bus, while the Chemicals and co got wasted and auctioned off pills. Another magazine described them as “surly”. Their press officer tells me their last interviewer gave up and went home after 20 minutes of blank stares and monosyllabic answers.

Eventually, they settle on clown masks with protuberant red noses. They look at each other… and burst out laughing.

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Pretty good, basic guide to the current (four!) different Batman comics. DC rebooted all their comics last year (September? 2011) and this summarizes how the comics featuring Batman as the main character fit together.

However, it seems they all exist in the same timeline/universe, so I’m not sure how well they cross over.

I’ve been reading older Batman comics for about a year, and I’m eager to get into reading the current ones, but the number of them to choose from has made it hard to get started.

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This is sad news about Apple’s retail stores. The thing that’s fascinating about Apple is their dedication to being great. I can’t help believing they’re getting it wrong here.

The Apple stores are so successful in terms of revenue, but don’t get that good margins (i.e. they spend a lot on the stores and staff). Maybe the costs have gotten a bit silly, and all we’re seeing is self-control. But surely the retail stores do more than sell directly. Their presence improves Apple’s image and provides a contact-point for any potential customer, regardless of whether they actually make the purchase elsewhere or online. How many purchases have been made outside the retail stores, but because of the retail stores?

It’s also hard to feel excited when the new guy in charge of Apple retail is he previous head of Dixons (and Currys and PC World). Who is well served by going to those shops?!

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A 17 year old black teenager in London says he’s been stopped-and-searched without cause fifty times since he was 14, and that on a number of occasions this has included bullshit charges (later dropped), wild accusations, strip searches, and detention in police cells. None of these stops has led to a conviction.

The last time he ended up in court with PC John Lovegrove accusing the teenager of assaulting him during a stop-and-search. The case fell apart when CCTV footage showed no such thing happened.

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Oh my goodness, that was a long, unexpected, fascinating read.

Lots of thinking to the future, and about fundamentals of government, freedom, choice and security, and how the concepts develop as the world becomes more and more computerised.

It’s a thorough essay, that explores multiple perspectives. Lots to think about.

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There are already ways for police and intelligence agencies to snoop on suspected criminals; they get a warrant, by justifying the need to snoop.

The government is looking to make it easier to snoop on suspected individuals, with less oversight. That in itself is scary, because we are supposed to able to live our law-abiding lives without scrutiny.

It’s also scary, because more data will be held about us in central locations, making ripe targets for criminals to harvest.

The impact snooping has on society is explored to its extreme in George Orwell’s novel “1984”, but this quote from Bruce Schneier highlights my real concerns about living with the expectation of scrutiny.

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that — either now or in the uncertain future — patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

• http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/myreactionto.html

Please be careful with our freedoms. Don’t destroy diversity in the UK.

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This list of stuff iOS users are missing out on is pretty good. But there’s also some really odd comments, especially since he’s using a Mac.

I didn’t know about Locale and that’s made me jealous.

I use it to change phone settings like 3G data, volume, and ringtone, based on conditions like location, time, Wi-Fi, plugging in headphones, and more. It’s fantastic.

This sentence made me laugh:

Swype feels just “magical” when the correct word pops up on the screen.

I realise he didn’t mean that Swype hardly ever gets the word right, but I couldn’t help reading it that way.

Android apps can register themselves for “sharing” and then they appear in the list of options to share a URL from the browser.

Inter-app communication is definitely something I’d like to see on iOS one day.

Drag-and-drop

I cringe every time I open iTunes on my MacBook to copy a song or movie onto my iPad.

It’s so much simpler on Android. I just connect my phone via Micro-USB cable and drag-and-drop files directly onto my phone in the Finder.

‘Drag-and-drop’ as an advantage of Android over iOS is amusing. I think iTunes sync is way superior to manually managing what music I have on my phone. I have a set of playlists that make sure I always have the stuff I want when I’m out and about, and also a selection of stuff I might like (e.g. new, or old). The times the iPhone is worst for syncing, is when it relies on drag-and-drop, e.g. for document management.

The same goes for photos. It’s a ton better for me to drag-and-drop photos onto my computer versus opening up iPhoto and “importing them.”

Photo stream is awesome. No thinking required.

I really love being able to spin up a hotspot on my phone when I’m out and about. I’m not a heavy user, but when I need it I’m really psyched to have it.

With iOS, I’ll end up using Tether or one of the other paid options for iPhone.

Wi-fi hotspot is a built-in feature on iOS.

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When we got a 3D TV, I looked in the high street shops to try and get a couple of 3D blurays to try out. I could hardly find any, so didn’t bother buying one 🙁 I assumed the market was still just too niche.

Looks like it’s more a case that most of the big 3D movies are only available exclusively bundled with a TVhttp://gizmodo.com/5715733/why-does-it-cost-300-to-buy-avatar-on-3d-blu+ray. It seems that’s no longer the case – I guess I’m behind on the news, but Avatar still hasn’t been released in 3D, THREE YEARS after it was at the cinemahttp://www.play.com/DVD/Blu-ray/4-/19510355/0/James-Cameron-Avatar-3D-2D/ListingDetails.html. I’m truly shocked.

No wonder the 3D TV business is doing so poorly – no-one’s got anything worth watching in 3D!

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