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Featured in Domain Arrivals · 2026-08-18

placedb: 1.67 million settlements, served as public-domain files

placedb.org ↗ · Developer Corner · score 84.0
Open: public page gives enough substance to understand the site $Paid: pricing, booking, ecommerce, subscription, or paid access is visible ADAds: visible ad load or ad-supported content Pretty: notable design, copy, craft, or presentation Pro: polished, finished-feeling, serious, or operationally mature Niche: specific audience, workflow, or unusually focused use case Human: personal, local, community, civic, handmade, or real-person signal !Suspicious: scammy, spammy, trust theater, finance fog, or credibility concern

A coordinate-rich dataset of countries, administrative divisions, and settlements, available through static JSON endpoints with no API key.

Why it surfaced

placedb covers 1,674,947 settlements and releases the data under CC0, so applications can ship it without attribution obligations. Its files identify their release, expose SHA-256 checksums, and can be rebuilt deterministically—an unusually explicit answer to the question of whether an API should remain a dependency.

The Plotter’s 09:30 Shift

August 18’s newborn domains include an obsolete pen plotter clocking in at 09:30, emergency warnings designed for sight, touch, or hearing, a funeral-folder tool calibrated for printer drift, and photographs of Colombian rental signs turned into a housing map.

This is one of 1,000 discoveries in the 2026-08-18 Domain Arrivals issue.