A Sam Altman Parody Offers a Fun Lesson in Memory Management

The RAM-Altman project’s GitHub page includes a dry run option that any Linux user with a Bash terminal should be able to paste and run without needing to search for emails. When the threshold is exceeded, each test output has a generated joke email, so that repeated runs produce different funny 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 of the script on my Fedora 44 KDE machine confirmed the author’s measurements. In my office Fedora’s System Information Center, the system reports 14.9 GB of total usable system RAM after the kernel and firmware take the necessary slices of the 16 GB of physical memory. This reflects the total capacity with which the system must operate, not the amount available at any given time. The Ram-Altman script shows that of this total pool of 14.9 GiB, 10 GiB is used, with 4.9 GiB available (33.1%). This figure is not the simple sum of the “free” and “cache” lines displayed by the script, but a number calculated by the kernel which represents the total 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: sender-not-set@example.com
To: recipient-not-set@example.com
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 memory usage time, while the script measures the amount of free capacity at the time of measurement. Although the script may tell Altman that 33% of your system’s RAM is available, it does not specify how often this is the case. The concession intrudes slightly on the joke, but it keeps everyone honest.

GitHub is right to point out that “--dry-run is the best way to enjoy it. It costs nothing and all the jokes are there. Used irresponsibly, this cheeky joke could turn into a tool of harassment, and Kay is quick to point out that the script doesn’t include anyone’s email, including Altman’s. Users deploying their own exploit version are encouraged to use only their own real email addresses and to honor any shutdown requests, as noted at the bottom of the script-generated output.

If you want to take a look at some of the emails generated without having to spin up a Linux machine that reports system status every five minutes, the project website ram-altman.lol reviews the sample emails generated by the script. Kay writes on the website: “In fairness, he says the remarks were taken out of context, published “I want you to have this much RAM” and briefly passed by Ram Altman on X. That makes this script a daily progress report.