A Sam Altman parody offers an amusing lesson in memory management

The GitHub page for the RAM-Altman project includes a dry-run option that any Linux user with a Bash terminal should be able to paste and run without the need for email trolling. When the threshold is exceeded, each dry run output features one generated joke email, so repeated runs produce different amusing examples.

git clone https://github.com/IainKay/ram-altman.git cd ram-altman chmod +x ram-altman.sh test-ram-altman.sh ./ram-altman.sh --status # see the evidence against you ./ram-altman.sh --dry-run # preview an email without sending it

A test run of the script on my Fedora 44 KDE machine confirmed the author’s measurements. Inside the System – Info Center of my Fedora desktop, the system reports 14.9 GiB of total usable system RAM after the kernel and firmware take their needed slices of the 16 GiB of physical memory. This reflects the total amount of capacity the system has to work with, not the amount available at any given time. The Ram-Altman script shows that of that 14.9 GiB total pool, 10 GiB is used, with 4.9 GiB available (33.1 percent). That figure isn’t the simple sum of the “free” and “cache” lines that the script displays, but a kernel-calculated figure that accounts for the full amount of memory that can be reclaimed.

nick@fedora:~$ git clone https://github.com/IainKay/ram-altman.git cd ram-altman bash ram-altman.sh --dry-run Cloning into 'ram-altman'... remote: Enumerating objects: 9, done. remote: Counting objects: 100% (9/9), done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (9/9), done. remote: Total 9 (delta 2), reused 3 (delta 0), pack-reused 0 (from 0) Receiving objects: 100% (9/9), done. Resolving deltas: 100% (2/2), done. Total: 14.9 GiB Used: 10.0 GiB Available: 4.9 GiB (33.1%) Free: 1.8 GiB Cache: 2.4 GiB From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Unused RAM detected in the wild Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2026 10:10:43 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Auto-Submitted: auto-generated Hi Sam, Daily status report: Total RAM: 14.9 GiB Available: 4.9 GiB (33.1%) Threat level: someone at OpenAI might notice Stay allocated, A concerned RAM owner -- Sent automatically, at most once a day, by a small script on one PC. Reply if you'd like it to stop.

The project concedes the nuance that Altman was referring to how much time memory spends being utilized, while the script measures how much capacity is free at the time of measurement. While the script might tell Altman that 33 percent of your system RAM is available, it doesn’t outline how often that’s the case. The concession steps on the joke slightly, but it keeps everyone honest.

The GitHub is wise to point out that “--dry-run is the best way to enjoy this. It costs nothing and all the jokes are there.” Used irresponsibly, this cheeky joke could morph into a harassment tool, and Kay quickly points out that the script does not include anyone’s email, including Altman’s. Users who deploy their own operating version are encouraged to only use their own real email addresses and honor any requests to stop, as is outlined at the bottom of the script-generated output.

If you’re interested in taking a look at some of the emails generated without having to spin up a Linux machine that reports the system status every five minutes, the ram-altman.lol project website rotates through sample emails generated by the script. Kay writes on the website that, “In fairness, he says the remarks were taken out of context, posted ‘i want you to have so much ram’, and briefly went by Ram Altman on X. That makes this script a daily progress report.”