At least where I work (Pivotal) where we are often rotating between pairs, and changing tracks of work in the order of every day to every few days, being kept up to date on the state of the rest of the work is useful.

Additionally, we use it as a chance to bring up anything we need help with, or anything we found interesting in the last day, which wasn't important enough to interrupt the rest of the team with.

> where we are often rotating between pairs, and changing tracks of work in the order of every day to every few days

These sort of working arrangements sound horribly inefficient. How do you ever get enough real familiarity with what you're actually doing when you're getting jerked around to something different every couple days? It sounds like being constantly on the treadmill.

you are in between those 2 extremes and standups are useful?

Right - some fraction of the team isn't zoned out, sure. Maybe working on the communication skills of those remaining ones is a better idea, than derailing everybody for a standup.