Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. Legacy Archives

Oh snap, Diet Coke’s newest vending machine became anorexic

Add as a preferred source on Google
Slender Vender Diet Coke
Image used with permission by copyright holder

If the word “diet” in Diet Coke doesn’t hit you over the head with how Diet Coke is supposedly good for your figure, the company has now paired up with ad agency Oglivy & Mather to create a new vending machine that’s skinnier than, well, you.

The ad campaign features the “Slender Vender” machine that was placed all around Paris to distribute sleek aluminum bottled version of the drink. It makes you look at the regular stuff in your fridge and think, “Ew, who wants to touch and drink out of those flabby fat cans? Get with the slim bottles!”

Recommended Videos

Slender Vender Diet Coke machineTouting itself as the world’s thinnest vending machine, the Slender Vender appears to be approximately one foot thick and can fit into most public spaces: Behind a photo booth, in an aisle of a bookstore, between mall escalators and airport benches, and more. Look carefully, or you may just miss it.

Although the new design boasts added practicality for extra placement locations, the thinness of the machine would also likely amount to less bottles stored. On the bright side, perhaps this will start adding jobs for Coke’s stock refill man. It’s not big enough to house webcams or Intel processors like its predecessor, but we’ll happily take one machine and stuff it into our New York-sized apartment… but only if Coca-Cola promises to make a Coke Zero edition.

Natt Garun
An avid gadgets and Internet culture enthusiast, Natt Garun spends her days bringing you the funniest, coolest, and strangest…
DeepSeeek V4 is out, touting some disruptive wins over Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude
An open-source model that beats GPT-5.4 on Codeforces and costs a fraction of Claude isn't just a news story; it's a pricing ultimatum to the entire AI industry.
DeepSeek AI chatbot running on an iPhone.

China’s DeepSeek has a habit of showing up, uninvited, to Silicon Valley’s AI party, and this time, it has done so with the long-awaited V4 preview. The Hangzhou-based company has released its latest AI model, which beats popular American models in certain areas. 

DeepSeek has launched two new models: V4-Pro (Expert mode) and V4-Flash (Instant mode). While the former is a massive 1.6 trillion parameter model, the latter is at a more manageable 284 billion parameters. However, both of them have a one-million-token context window. 

Read more
The days of ugly solar panels could finally be over. Say hello to artsy colorful tiles!
These colorful solar panels can blend into almost any building.
ShadeCut-solar-panel

Solar panels are great for the planet, but have long been a headache for architects, homeowners, and historic preservation boards. That tension between sustainability and aesthetics may finally have a real solution.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Germany have developed a technology called ShadeCut, which applies colored, patterned films to solar modules that can convincingly mimic roof tiles, masonry, or even custom logo designs.

Read more
Sony’s table tennis robot made me think about what happens when AI gets a body
Ace starts as a flashy sports demo and quickly turns into a preview of AI moving from screens into factories, hospitals, farms, and homes
Ball, Sport, Tennis

I wanted to dismiss Sony’s table tennis robot as another expensive lab flex. A machine that can rally against elite players is impressive, sure, but it also sounds like the kind of demo built to make executives clap in a room where everyone already agreed to be impressed.

But table tennis is a nastier test than it looks. The ball is small, fast, spinning, and rude enough to change direction the moment it hits the table. Sony’s system faces something less forgiving than calculation. It has to see, predict, and act before the point is gone.

Read more