[Beowulf] [EXTERNAL] Lambda and Alexa [EXT]

[Tim Cutts]

I think the 8 second limit is probably arbitrary.  Lambda’s normal limit is 5 minutes.  I presume Amazon did some UX work, and basically asked “what’s the maximum length of time your average user is willing to wait for an answer before they consider it a bad experience”, and came up with 8 seconds.  You’re not allowed to change that value, so they obviously take it seriously!

While testing the skill I developed, I certainly found that the turnaround time when I had to perform a full remote data fetch was about 5 seconds.  That’s long enough after asking Alexa the question that I start to think “is it going to reply? is it working?” and that’s not a good experience, so my approach to that has been:

(a) cache the data fetched; the data is stored in session attributes, and persisted to S3.  That cached copy provides a response which is within a second or two, a much nicer experience.

(b) when fetching fresh data, there’s a progressive response API which you can call asynchronously, while the slower task takes place.  Now, that 5 second wait doesn’t feel so bad, because you’re listening to “Please wait while I ask for the latest data” while the real work goes on in the background.  Silence in a conversation feels really uncomfortable really quickly, as we all know.

Sorry, this is nothing to do with HPC or Beowulf, although kind of interesting from a UX perspective on voice-controlled systems.

Tim





On 25 Nov 2020, at 15:33, Lux, Jim (US 7140) <james.p.lux at jpl.nasa.gov<mailto:james.p.lux at jpl.nasa.gov>> wrote:

Interesting..

Where does the 8 second limit come from? (Rodeos and bull/bronc riding, where you only have to stay on for 8 seconds?) I’ve seen this 8 second thing in a bunch of places lately, and I wonder.. why not 7, or 10 or whatever?  I find it hard to believe that someone has a 3 bit counter in seconds (or worse, it’s a 33 bit counter counting nanoseconds or some such, and the limit is actually 8.589 seconds)





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