Someone Built a Script That Emails Sam Altman When Your RAM Sits Idle

A developer has turned Sam Altman's complaint about idle home computers into a working script — and it does exactly what you'd expect: it emails him.

Altman recently argued that RAM belongs in datacenters, claiming the memory in people's PCs sits used "maybe 5% of the time" and calling the waste "quite terrible." A developer's response was Ram-Altman: a Linux tool that logs a PC's memory usage every five minutes and, once a day, sends Altman an email if more than 10% of the RAM went unused.

Key points

• A script emails Sam Altman when a home PC's RAM sits idle
• Altman said PC RAM is used "maybe 5% of the time" and belongs in datacenters
• Ram-Altman logs memory every five minutes and reports daily if over 10% is unused

How it works

The tool runs quietly on a Linux machine, sampling memory usage on a five-minute cadence. At the end of each day it compiles the readings and — if more than a tenth of the RAM was never touched — sends its report straight to Altman's inbox.

Whether datacenters actually want the world's spare RAM is a different question — but at least one machine is now honest about its idle memory, daily.

Via @IntCyberDigest on X · 2.4K likes · 114K views