From Ars Technica · · 2m
A joke script turns RAM into a daily roast
Developer Iain Kay built a satirical tool that emails Sam Altman every time your PC has spare memory, mocking the OpenAI CEO's comments about wasted computing resources.
In brief
Developer Iain Kay built a satirical tool that emails Sam Altman every time your PC has spare memory, mocking the OpenAI CEO's comments about wasted computing resources. A developer created Ram-Altman, a parody script that emails Sam Altman when system RAM sits unused, satirising his October twenty-ninth remarks about…
Altman's RAM remarks spark a parody
On the October twenty-ninth Cheeky Pint podcast episode with Stripe President John Collison, Sam Altman said having RAM sitting in personal computers used only five percent of the time was globally inefficient.
“it's quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used 5 percent of the time”
Developer Iain Kay builds Ram-Altman
Developer Iain Kay created Ram-Altman, a satirical bash script that emails Sam Altman once daily if more than ten percent of system RAM is available, mocking Altman's comments.
Altman clarifies and changes his name
Altman said his comments were taken out of context and briefly changed his display name to RAM Altman on X. Kay notes this was objectively excellent and where the project gets its name.
How the script measures available memory
Ram-Altman calculates available RAM by taking MemTotal minus MemAvailable from slash proc slash meminfo. This includes page cache and reclaimable slab but excludes tmpfs and shared memory.
Why Linux memory reporting is tricky
Linux often reports surprisingly little free RAM because it does not count memory currently claimable for use. The kernel fills available RAM with file data for quick access but can reclaim it instantly when needed.
Testing the script on a real machine
On a Fedora forty-four KDE machine with sixteen gigabytes of physical memory, the script showed fourteen point nine gigabytes total usable RAM, ten gigabytes used, and four point nine gigabytes available at thirty-three point one…
The script's limitation and honesty
The project acknowledges that Altman referred to how often memory is utilised over time, while the script measures capacity free at one moment. This concession keeps the joke honest about what it actually measures.
Safeguards against misuse
The script does not include anyone's email address by default. Kay emphasises that dry-run is the best way to enjoy this, and users deploying it should only use their own email addresses and honour requests…
“dry-run is the best way to enjoy this. It costs nothing and all the jokes are there”
Sample emails available online
The ram-altman dot lol website rotates through sample emails generated by the script, letting people see the jokes without running Linux.
In short
A developer created Ram-Altman, a parody script that emails Sam Altman when system RAM sits unused, satirising his October twenty-ninth remarks about inefficient personal computer memory use.
