RAM-Altman reports unused RAM on your machine, one email a day

RAM-Altman is a tongue-in-cheek Bash utility that turns a claim about personal computers leaving much of their memory idle into a daily “report” to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. On Linux machines, it checks whether more than 10% of RAM is available and, if so, emails a playful notice about the supposedly underused capacity. The project riffs on Altman’s comments about global DRAM allocation, while acknowledging his later clarification that he wants people to have plenty of memory and that more memory should be built. Its central joke is that a cron job can keep him informed about the RAM sitting outside data centres.

The script uses Linux’s MemAvailable figure to distinguish genuinely available memory from memory in use, including reclaimable cache; on older kernels it estimates availability from free memory and cache. It logs measurements to CSV, samples every five minutes when scheduled, and sends no more than one email per day, with varied subjects and wording. It requires Bash, Linux, and a working mail-sending command, and supports status checks and dry runs; tests use simulated memory and a fake mailer. The maintainers stress that it will not ease a memory shortage, that reported memory use is not the same as time spent using memory, and that mass emailing would be abusive. They recommend using the preview mode, sending only from a real address, and stopping if asked.