This DIY Creator Is Building a Compass That Only Points to Taco Bell

Tru Narla remembers when the latest tech—the cutting-edge consumer hardware itself—was colorful. You probably do too, even if it feels like we’re a long way away from flip phones, bedazzled digital cameras, and endearingly bulbous, candy-colored Apple laptops.

In 2023, Narla hopped off a career track that had taken her from Brown University’s computer science department to software engineering for companies like Square and Discord. Now, with 448K followers on her Instagram and over 9 million likes on her TikTok videos, the Hyderabad, India-born creator has reinvented herself as a maker of custom-built devices that feel like forgotten artifacts from the mid-2000s or the kind of fictional tech you might have seen on iCarly.

“I just miss the age of ‘everything was a rainbow,’” Narla told Gizmodo. “Everything is a rectangle now. Let’s change it up.”