#057: Scientist Cures Own Breast Cancer, Facebook's Little Red Book, University System of the Future

Hi All!

We are pleased to welcome you to this week's edition of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding from the material found on our main site - becketu.com.

This week, we will take a look at the employee handbook Facebook shared after obtaining 1 billion users, how a scientist successfully treated her own breast cancer, what the future 'university' system will look like, and more.

Let's dive in:

Facebook's Little Red Book

"Facebook was not originally created to be a company" reads the first page of Facebook's legendary and elusive, Little Red Book.

The Little Red Book is an employee handbook that was introduced in 2012, originally designed to capture the company's mission, history, and culture. It was made when Facebook reached one billion users and is full of interesting material.

One of my favorite parts in the book reads, "each Facebook engineer is responsible for approximately 1,000,000 people using Facebook." It continues, "1 out of 7 people in the world are on Facebook..That's amazing. That's a lot". But it further elaborates, "6 out of 7 people in the world are not on Facebook...That's a lot more. 6,000,000,000 more".

It's a great reminder to acknowledge our accomplishments, but to not remain idle. The inspirational quotes and historic anecdotes serve as a type of 'company propaganda', and can remind us all to think of what our north star is for our work.

Best Roadmaps for Learning Software Development

​Roadmap.sh is one of the best resources for visually displaying the roadmap and path for learning different software skills. Whether you are looking to be a Full Stack developer, a data analyst, an iOS developer, or even a blockchain developer, Roadmaps has a myriad of specialties covered.

Let's say you are interested in becoming a game developer, the first thing it shows you to learn is game mathematics. This includes linear algebra, vector, matrix, geometry, perspective, and more. You then move on to game physics which includes center of mass, acceleration, force, friction and more. You'd proceed to a game engine, such as Unity 3D, Unreal Engine, Native, and more. You get the picture.

​Learn-anything.xyz used to be one of the best resources as far as as finding an organized way to systemically learn any subject you are interested in. But we find Roadmaps to be more organized, and the user experience is overall better.

Scientist Successfully Treats Her Own Breast Cancer

​Virologist Beata Halassy successfully treated her own recurring stage 3 breast cancer by injecting lab-grown viruses directly into her tumor over a two-month period. This unconventional self-treatment, known as oncolytic virotherapy (OVT), resulted in the tumor shrinking and detaching from surrounding tissue, allowing for successful surgical removal and leaving Halassy cancer-free for four years.

Although ethical debates have begun in the medical community, the self-experimentation provides a huge milestone in treating breast cancer. The potential effectiveness of OVT and insights into the use of multiple viruses show exciting possibilities in cancer treatment.

The Shape Of Universities

"The Palantir degree is the best degree, bar none" was a recent quote from a video featuring Palantir CEO Alex Karp. In the video, Karp meets with current undergraduate students who are candidates to join the new Semester at Palantir program.

The program may set a precedent for what the future of internships, or universities, may look like. Chrisman Frank, CEO of new educational school Synthesis, noted this as well in a recent tweet: "The thing most people want from college is a foot in the door for their first job. And there's no reason companies won't be better at selecting and growing talent than colleges."

Aside from Palantir, holding a 'degree' (I.e. experience) from any well-known or respected company may be the new status signal for the upcoming workforce.

The Symmetry of Physics

A brief quote from Tsung-Dao Lee, the youngest American to have won a Nobel prize, on the symmetry of physics:

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