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RAM Altman: Linux Script Emails Sam Altman Daily How Much Unused RAM in Your PC

91 points randycupertino 3 hours ago 33 comments

badgersnake 3 hours ago | parent

I didn’t think we’d get to the point where all compute is headed for the data centre and normal people don’t get to have anything bigger than a phone but here we are.

usui 1 hour ago | parent

Kind of inevitable when you realize how much people are naturally willing to give up computational sovereignty for the sake of convenience and psychological safety espousing values claiming the opposite, and it's still the case despite everything that's happened so far

xg15 50 minutes ago | parent

I don't think there is a lot of conscious choice here: If at some point, anything more complex than a phone would be phased out or become unaffordable for consumers, that's not because consumers had somehow collectively voted they only want phones from now on.

usui 13 minutes ago | parent

Well sure someone could argue that the market isn't an actually reasonable set of choices that people can vote on, but how can it not be considered at least some form of voting? There's been at least 30-40 years in which consumers could try to find out. Unfortunately there's only a finite amount of resources in the market and consumers have to compromise on what takes priority in the tech industry, like getting work done or tackling issues that are visible only in front of them. When people collectively vote for politicians they also have to compromise

I don't feel extremely on either end, but I would prefer if consumers could own their choices and not try to pretend otherwise

xg15 1 minute ago | parent

Well, ok, what would you do in the current situation to "vote" for affordable RAM?

In a perfectly free and fair market and in a world where companies would plan their product strategy exclusively based on current consumer data, this would be true. But neither holds in the real world: The current AI gold rush is now something that is largely decided between investors, boardrooms and hardware vendors with little input from small everyday consumers. And I wager this had been the case for many "tech trends" before that seem more forced on users than being a reaction on them - such as forced updates, mandatory accounts, subscriptions, in-app purchases etc.

altcognito 3 hours ago | parent

What are the chances that they already do this :) Well, probably not given how much memory the harnesses use. (Claude too in fairness)

Tiberium 3 hours ago | parent

Dupe? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50414839

SurfingAlpaca 55 minutes ago | parent

That's a dupe too. This is the original https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50412766

realist_not 3 hours ago | parent

Wouldn't unused RAM infuriate him more ?

badgersnake 3 hours ago | parent

That’s the point.

bstsb 3 hours ago | parent

the ridiculous "no ad blocker" full-screen modal that's unclosable led me down a rabbit hole there - turns out there's some obfuscated script from "Ad Shield" which replaces the whole site with an iframe if you dare to block their domain, "html-load.com", which proxies ad networks.

fortunately one can just run debugger; to stop it early

BrandoElFollito 1 hour ago | parent

I noticed it on several completely unrelated sites since a few days. I've never seen it before.

I was wondering if they're was some kind of consolidation/buyoff of pro-ad-protection services.

braiamp 41 minutes ago | parent

Or... one run noscript

Jamesbeam 1 hour ago | parent

All your RAM are belong to us

I am an old-school guy. I don’t send them emails with unused RAM, I just fax them a printout of the script so they have to physically look at it and remove it before it goes in the trash. Bonus points if you send it to legal. Legal always has a fax machine.

With what people at OpenAI make per hour, every fax costs them thousands of dollars in labor costs, wasting all their precious resources one toner cartridge at a time in the process.

I am just making proper use of all that underutilised toner.

kraken_cult 57 minutes ago | parent

This guy knows what's up.

spearfish 51 minutes ago | parent

No toner on fax machines, just forever chemical paper that slowly muders their employees.

Jamesbeam 40 minutes ago | parent

Obviously you do not know my trusty battle fax. The Brother Laser Fax 2840.

22 direct-dial and 200 speed-dial entries. Broadcast to up to 272 participants. Sexy.

Lots of companies still use Laserfax. dr2200 toner cartridge is 40 bucks for 12k pages.

peri-cl 24 minutes ago | parent

> "Broadcast to up to 272 participants."

256 + 16? How do you get a number like that? Some trick with variable-width binary codes?

Jamesbeam 9 minutes ago | parent

Not a binary encoding trick. It's just the sum of the fax machine's recipient capacities.

22 One-Touch numbers + 200 Speed-Dial numbers + 50 manually dialled numbers = 272

If you do not store a Group on any of your Brother machine's One Touch or Speed Dial locations, you can Broadcast a fax to as many as 272 different numbers.

subarctic 37 minutes ago | parent

If you're going to that trouble you may as well create a DOI number for it so they think it's a rare book and scan and destroy it.

Jamesbeam 15 minutes ago | parent

I think my signature will do for now.

Regards,

https://fbi.cults3d.com/uploaders/15196480/photo-file/19c974...

ChrisArchitect 52 minutes ago | parent

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50412766

dmitrygr 44 minutes ago | parent

I am sad that it is not configured to actually email him by default

e2le 32 minutes ago | parent

I would hesitate to say the memory used by the filesystem cache is unused.

rvz 29 minutes ago | parent

Just what is the point?

AnimalMuppet 15 minutes ago | parent

To rub Altman's nose in the fact that we have RAM that he wishes he had.

Or, more likely (since I doubt he's ever going to see one of these emails), to make us feel a bit better about ourselves after Altman said (in effect) that what we want doesn't matter.

senordevnyc 27 minutes ago | parent

lol, it’s so funny watching the cynical AI haters whip yourself into a frenzy over this. I bet 99% of you didn’t even listen to this podcast episode. His comments were so anodyne, y’all are ridiculous.

EDIT: lmao, and now people are going through my history and rage-downvoting things. Imagine being this fragile.

leafingensemble 15 minutes ago | parent

It is just one symptom of a push for corporate-controlled infrastructure.

A single unencrypted point of access is the dream for watching and controlling your life.

That is the centralized API in a nutshell, a single unencrypted point of access.

dofm 10 minutes ago | parent

Hey, it's not just the cynical AI haters.

You have to factor in all the people enjoying that the shitcoin-for-your-iris-scans guy is having his time in the comedy-drubbing barrel. Don't leave us out, we've been waiting a lot longer for this.

FWIW, "anodyne" is not the word I'd reach for when describing things Altman says — I much prefer "banal".

(Not sure you can classify me as a hater, at least not in my day job context. Cynical: it's a fair cop.)

tomcatfish 27 minutes ago | parent

Is this a script-kiddy DDOS (when many users run it) of someone's email? This doesn't seem very HN.

Edit: No, the email is blank, so it's just a regular DOS, unless his email is public somewhere and everyone will fill in the same email. Still not very HN, but just bad, not malicious.

ErroneousBosh 24 minutes ago | parent

I have no unused RAM; if any shows up I spin up some nested Alpine VMs. I got 20 layers deep the other day.

Fucking Cry Harder, AI bros.

hosh 20 minutes ago | parent

We’ve had this idea before.

Back in the 1800s, we had this idea called Manifest Destiny. There was a famous painting about it, _American Progress_, painted by John Gast in 1872. It depicts Columbia, bringing civilization and liberty - telegraphs and railroads - for creating a great nation. It was devastating for the Native Americans.

https://youtu.be/HCZmBMo_jhM

Similar ideas now, though it doesn’t have broad support. People are angry and fighting back against data centers.

neya 8 minutes ago | parent

So, the guy who built an AI company that thrives on your personal information to sell you ads and your idea of fighting the said guy is voluntarily emailing him everyday more personal information?