Khaled Al-Shamaa

Research Database Manager and Senior Analyst at @ICARDA interested in #DataScience, #AI, #RStats, #PHP and #Arabic Language. Views are my own.

[Khaled Al-Shamaa @arphp]

Wrapping up the year grateful for an inspiring work environment and an incredible global team. Learning every day from colleagues across Chile, Mexico, Spain, Morocco, Italy, Senegal, India, and beyond. Different cultures, one shared purpose. Onward to an even stronger year ahead

[ICARDA @ICARDA]

#StoriesOf2025

A story from 2025 that holds a special place in our hearts. ❤️

Syria is where ICARDA’s story began. After years of conflict took a heavy toll on agriculture, a new chapter is taking shape focused on restoring local agricultural systems and building resilience. 🌱

Explore how ICARDA is working with the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture to support this new chapter.

Read our 2025 Annual Report: https://t.co/CERLAFg2VZ

[Ahmed @ahmd3ssam]

حتى لو مش هتبني نموذج معرفة الكلام ده مهم و ان شاء الله يكون بداية خير، مجهود اكثر من رائع 👏👏👏

[jack @jack]

We believe voice is the most natural way to interact with intelligence, so we created Dessa, the most authentic full-duplex speech model ever built. Talking with it feels like talking with a person…full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence.

https://t.co/r0qFLdvd6c

[The PHP Foundation @ThePHPF]

Set session.upload_progress.enabled=0 till next PHP release to block an unlikely RCE vector (CVE-2026-115560). Already recommended for CVE-2026-109619 Wed, keep disabled. Only apps with non-default serialize_handler switching it to "php" at runtime can be affected. #php #phpc

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Cancelling a subscription shouldn't be this hard. If you can sign up with a click, you must be able to cancel with one.

Head to https://t.co/f0iHDhKzTK to file a complaint against any business that makes it hard to cancel a subscription.

[الصندوق الكويتي للتنمية @KuwaitFund]

تصريح د. نزار حداد، المدير العام على هامش توقيع #الصندوق_الكويتي للتنمية اتفاقية منحة مع المركز الدولي للبحوث الزراعية في المناطق الجافة «إيكاردا»، للإسهام في تمويل مشروع تطوير ونشر الأصناف الزراعية المحسّنة وراثياً باستخدام الحلول الذكية. يهدف المشروع إلى تحديث وتسريع برامج التحسين الوراثي للمحاصيل الزراعية، من خلال تطوير أصناف محسّنة قادرة على التكيّف مع التغيرات المناخية والظروف البيئية في المناطق الجافة وشبه الجافة بالدول العربية.

A statement by Dr. Nizar Haddad, Director-General of (ICARDA) on the sidelines of the grant agreement signing between#KuwaitFund for Development and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (@ICARDA ) to contribute to the financing of a smart solutions-based project for developing and disseminating genetically improved agricultural varieties. It aims to update and accelerate genetically improved agricultural crops programs through developing modified varieties capable of adapting to climate change and environmental conditions of dry and semi-dry regions in Arab states.

[ICARDA @ICARDA]

A major milestone for climate-resilient agriculture across the Arab region!
ICARDA and @KuwaitFund have signed the Regional Breeding Modernization Project (BredMod 2.0), implemented with the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR).

Together, we aim to modernize crop breeding, accelerate the development of climate-resilient varieties, and strengthen food security across the Arab region.

Read more: https://t.co/soiTnybvN8

[OpenAI @OpenAI]

OpenAI models helped researchers—operating as part of our Patch the Planet initiative—discover critical security flaws in PHP, an open-source programming language used to run an estimated 70% of websites.

Over the past two months, we led a coalition of maintainers, researchers, and security providers to prepare fixes and protections ahead of disclosure. This duration was necessary because the fix was quite intricate and required a major change to the PHP engine. Every site using PHP can now safely upgrade their version to stay secure, in addition to applying mitigations from various security vendors.

Due to the severity of these flaws and PHP’s widespread use, we consider this bug to be one of the most impactful vulnerabilities in recent memory. It also marks a new phase, where AI can find security bugs with internet-scale impact.

This is an example of the Defender’s Window in action: to our knowledge, frontier AI was able to find this vulnerability ahead of attackers, giving defenders time to prepare.
https://t.co/TW3jrSbB3f

[Khaled Al-Shamaa @arphp]

The minimal action if you don't want to take your system offline 🫣

[Cloudflare @Cloudflare]

Cloudflare has deployed default web application firewall (WAF) protections for newly disclosed PHP vulnerabilities before public disclosure. The rules use request and response signals to stop exploit attempts and prevent exposed data from reaching attackers. https://t.co/OQG4x6x858

[Khaled Al-Shamaa @arphp]

IF AN IMMEDIATE UPDATE IS NOT FEASIBLE, IT IS RECOMMEND THAT ORGANIZATIONS TAKE THE SYSTEM OFFLINE UNTIL IT CAN BE FULLY MITIGATED. 🤯 💣

[NSA Cyber @NSACyber]

Effective Immediately, all organizations using PHP for their systems are advised to be prepared for an update addressing two critical vulnerabilities. PHP is widely used for web applications. These vulnerabilities often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database. If an immediate update is not feasible, it is recommend that organizations take the system offline until it can be fully mitigated. NSA will follow up shortly with more specific guidance.

[The PHP Foundation @ThePHPF]

We have posted more information about today's security releases, including the sequence of events that led to the discovery, how the PHP security team is improving their processes, and what we need from you to continue this critical work. #php #security https://t.co/gbGTmk7yh1

[Gradium @GradiumAI]

A new frontier for on-device speech.

We're open-sourcing Phonon, a suite of TTS models under 50m parameters, setting a new standard for naturalness and accuracy across languages, with the broadest inference support to date.

Phonon-31m is available under Apache 2.0.

https://t.co/d3qa9qmnzY🧵

[BleepingComputer @BleepinComputer]

🚨 BREAKING: PHP is warning admins to prepare for emergency security updates tomorrow to fix two critical vulnerabilities rated CVSS 9.2.

However, security researchers at @watchtowrcyber rate the flaws CVSS 10.0 and say they are RCE vulnerabilities affecting PHP 5 through 8.

Information about the vulnerabilities has reportedly leaked ahead of disclosure.

No known exploitation in the wild.

🔗 https://t.co/ZkCeLGaiAc
https://t.co/ZkCeLGaiAc

[Gemini Notebook @Gemini_Notebook]

Now you can co-create Slide Decks & Video Overviews to make sure you're getting *exactly* what you want. Here's how it works:

—Select a suggested focus topic from your sources (or type your own)

—Select the format, length, language, and visual style

—Review and edit the slide outline or video producer notes

—Generate, voila!

Available to all Pro and Ultra subscribers, try it out and let us know what you think!

[Khaled Al-Shamaa @arphp]

@giswqs

[The PHP Foundation @ThePHPF]

To increase PHP representation in open source research, we encourage you to take the 2027 State of Open Source Survey. Perforce, in collaboration with the Open Source Initiative and the Eclipse Foundation, have released the survey and you can take it here: https://t.co/6bLvFUczpr

[Khaled Al-Shamaa @arphp]

Introducing Scope: Open-source evaluation for AI coding agents https://t.co/1QFv1uc5h4

[Khaled Al-Shamaa @arphp]

Our Fortran and GenStat code carries years of scientific work. It is time to bring that knowledge into modern platforms like R for flexible, interpreted workflows and Rust for fast, compiled applications, making our tools easier to maintain, extend, and share 🤗

[OpenAI @OpenAI]

Our latest model advances bring stronger capabilities for building and migrating software in low-resource programming languages such as COBOL, Fortran, and Visual Basic.

These languages power software that banks, governments, and businesses depend on. Progress here means understanding decades of business logic and helping developers modernize those systems while preserving what works.

We’re building these capabilities around the challenges developers and enterprise customers bring us. If your team is working on these systems, tell us which languages and workflows we should tackle next.

https://t.co/2TbnkQixJ1

[Satya Nadella @satyanadella]

In @Nature this week, our new research shows how machine learning can improve weather forecasts two to six weeks out, a timeframe that's historically been very difficult to predict.

It's exciting to see the potential of this work to help us better prepare for extreme weather, manage natural resources, and make more informed decisions in agriculture.

There's a broader lesson here... the future may not just be about ever-more-capable models, but about building intelligent verification systems around them: systems that learn where models are systematically wrong, reason about cause and effect, and continuously calibrate predictions against reality.

Read more: https://t.co/WTXJM09474

[Qiusheng Wu @giswqs]

RustGIS is now on the Microsoft Store!

On Windows 10 and 11, you can now install RustGIS from the Microsoft Store in one click. No installer to download, no security warnings, and the Store keeps it up to date with each new release.

What you get

- The full desktop app: the ribbon, panes, map view, attribute table, geoprocessing tools and the AI Assistant.
- Open data, built in: search STAC catalogs, Planetary Computer, Overture Maps, Source Cooperative, OpenStreetMap and other open-data portals.
- Cloud-native formats read in place: GeoParquet, FlatGeobuf and cloud-optimised GeoTIFFs open by their web address.
- The command line too: rustgis-cli is ready in your terminal as soon as the app is installed.
- Free and open source, with no sign-up needed.

Get it

- Microsoft Store: https://t.co/pNPwBqKZJN
- Or from a terminal: winget install OpenGeos.RustGIS
- Not on Windows? Launch the web app: https://t.co/BLtOaf6BoO
- Other downloads: https://t.co/BoF4bkGM5a
- Documentation: https://t.co/PhsUZVbpeq
- GitHub: https://t.co/K7asDzveEr

#GIS #Rust #OpenSource #Geospatial #Windows #MicrosoftStore #OpenData