The devices in question all were fat formatted, for which it is quite easy to reconstruct most of the “deleted” content using readily available simple tools (which I did).
But that was some time in the past, nowadays most systems use some kind of base encryption, making it less likely to easily find something.
The phone, on the other hand, was just not doing a factory reset before selling it, but only deleting files (and missing stuff, like some mail folders) and not having a password-protection at all… 😬

some small percentage of the data will still be around, because they do overprovisioning.

That’s why I wrote “directly accessible data”. You are certainly right that safely erasing all data on SSDs is hard to impossible to achieve, but so is the read access to it.
That means if we disregard the drug distribution or similar scenarios, should be enough for the normal person.

But I mean secure wipe isn’t hard… It’s copy-pasting 2 more commands from the Arch wiki, compared to the dd command.
But it will take significantly longer (typically using /dev/random and multiple passes) without noticably increasing security for SSDs.

It will have also have the same possible write-speed-penalty issue as the zero-overwriting, but this won’t be OPs problem any more because he is selling the SSD.

Is anyone even likely to be curious enough to look?

Well, can only speak for me, but first thing I do.
I mean, you can never know which administrative scandal you might uncover…
I stop the moment I find private stuff, though.
Had that three or four times already, the only case I was considering doing something about it was a completely unsecured and unerased phone still containing a bunch of business emails that clearly were sensitive or even confidential stuff.
I just told the seller how he screwed up here, instead of making a bigger fuss out of it.

You don’t have to install anything on it, just connect it to a running PC and do a dd if=/dev/zero, that should be enough to get rid of any remnants directly accessible.
Unless you are part of a drug distribution organization, in that case just use a hammer, a microwave and a blowtorch.

First day on the internet?

But somebody made a decision to not have you guys killed

Absolutely, not questioning that for a moment!
(Same reason my wife wears similar lights when riding her horse along public roads in winter also it also looks embarrasing).

My military time has been before the incident you mentiioned btw (got drafted in 1995 for 10 months), which makes the incident even more tragic (if they didn’t use the warning lights), as the lights at the rear seem to already have been common practice in some armies at the time…

I fondly remember back in the days doing military exercise marches on public roads:
The last soldier in the column would have to walk with a signalling light attached to the top of his helmet.
I typically walked in some front row (benefit of being tall and placed there for some military-aesthetics reasons), so was at least spared that embarrassment. :-)

we’re all hanging around in Messenger groups with some “Is a real human” vetting process

I think there is a very high likelihood this, or a communication concept based on this, will be the future. Maybe like SSL trusted identity certificates, but not for websites, but for users.

I guess I prefer the Unix philosophy of doing things:
Have a bunch of combinable small programs each being dedicated to a single function and doing that well instead of large complex monoliths.

Let’s be realistic.

A “No AI” community is also just material tacked as first grade training data for the next wave of AI bots.

But for now, it at least still is a slightly nicer place to be, so I savour it as long as it lasts…

Or IT equipment.
Or (looking at the current draught during our 6th heat wave this year) water.

Had a look into the ublock settings.
The one I found seems to be more of a nuke-grade total disabling, as opposed to the fine-grained approach of the noscript extension.

:-D

Sometimes, I just love the Fediverse and its inhabitants! ❤️

“Sie sind ohne Zweifel der schrägste Online-Skript-Nutzer, von dem ich je gehört habe!”
“Aber, ihr habt von mir gehört!”

;-)

I have never heard the bottom left take anywhere before, though.
Having said that, Firefox+ublock+noscript rules.

A bit much of a hassle to save 7.99€…

Also those useful prepaid credit cards silently seem to have disappeared (at least where I live).
Had to switch to a neobroker that issues credit cards as an alternative some years back.

Never thought I would feel grateful that the bank notifications I got so far in my live have been practically 100% inquiries to go see my bank clerk so he can sell me an underperforming pension scheme…

I wish I will still have as much drip as Christopher Walken when I am at his age…

Well, according to OPs meme, you are all nihilistic doomerists ;-)
No, believe me, my GenX humor is much more stupider!

Naa, we’ll be bitching about AI instead when it’s our turn! ;-)