Nuseir Yassin didn't intend to become one of Facebook's most successful vloggers.

Growing up in Arraba, a small agricultural city in northern Israel, Yassin, an Israeli-Palestinian, came from a modest middle-class family. Yassin is the middle child of four; his mother, a teacher, and his father, a psychologist, valued education and hard work. In many of his videos, Yassin confesses he was shy and socially awkward as a kid.

The first glimpse of his future as a global citizen came at age 19. Limited by his prospects in Israel, he set his sights on Ivy League colleges in the US.

Yassin says he was "hungry" for an education at a prestigious university. He applied to Harvard to major in aerospace engineering, and once accepted he was offered a scholarship to offset the cost.

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He graduated with a degree in Economics and moved to New York City to work his way through the ranks in the tech industry. He began coding for the PayPal-owned money-transfer app, Venmo, where he says his salary was well above $100,000 per year.

By modern standards, in terms of education, career and income, Yassin had made it.

But he was tired of the routine, and felt he was wasting time at his very cushy desk job; time he felt could be better spent traveling the world.

"My job was overpaid. It wasn't satisfying enough," he told Business Insider.

So Yassin spent a year and a half saving up $60,000. In 2016, he quit his job, bought a camera, a plane ticket, and committed himself to traveling the world full-time.

Yassin adopted the moniker "Nas"- Arabic for "people" - and setup a Facebook page called Nas Daily, where he committed to documenting every day of his travels. He pledged to make a single video every day for 1,000 days; As of this writing, he's more than three-quarters of the way to his goal.

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"I don't usually take risks," he told me, as we sat at a rooftop bar in Australia, now his 65th travel destination, "But I decided to make use of every single day, I didn't want to waste a single minute," he said.

His first destination, Kenya, proved to be a fruitful one. A Russia-owned media company operating out of Nairobi saw one of his early videos and offered to pay him to create content for their Facebook pages. The company paid him $3,000 a month for his services, which Nas says allowed him to continue traveling comfortably and granted him the exposure he needed to build an audience.

"I make videos about people's stories in a way that is human," Nas said of his filming style. He decided to document his days through the lens of one-minute video clips.

"We live very busy lives. But everyone has a spare minute," he explained.

Slowly, his audience grew. His videos document was he calls "real life," and they resonate with millions of viewers around the world. As of this writing, he has over 6.3 million Facebook followers, and growing.

"My success came from the fact that I'm not a typical blogger," he said, explaining that his ethnicity and the one-minute format of his videos set him apart from other predominantly white vloggers who have found success on video-hosting sites, like YouTube.

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He added that he purposely sets his sights on less-popular tourist destinations, like Rwanda, Tanzania, and Malta, to give his audience a broader worldview.

"There is a lot of the world that is undiscovered. I went to the places that most other bloggers don't go to," he said.

Nas has created a business off of his personal mantra of self-fulfillment. He sells themed T-shirts that spell out what percentage of your life is already over. Nas consults for businesses and people looking to produce multimedia content. He earns revenue from Facebook ads embedded in his videos. He puts his total net-worth at roughly $250,000, which he says is far less than what other travel vloggers earn.

Still, he understands he can't travel forever, and his plans extend beyond day 1,000.

Facebook/Nas Daily

"I have this fear that if I die today, tomorrow I am nothing. If my work consists of making one-minute videos, the minute I die, my project dies with me. I wanted to start a business that has employees that will outlive my daily grind, he said."

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Nas plans to employ a collective of content producers to target several specific audiences, and hopes to pass along his expertise and own a partial stake in their productions.

He says he'd be interested in writing a book and creating a television series. He's even considering a foray into local politics.

"I personally am sick of old white men running people's lives," he said.

He offers a word of advice to young entrepreneurs, or people tired of living the 9-to-5 life: "The cheesy answer is 'work hard, don't quit." he said. "Traveling can get lonely, and you will have no base and no friends. You really need to get into the mentality of really enjoying every new experience, and that's real success."

He says he is privileged to have started his journey with a substantial nest egg that allowed him to travel without worry.

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"I would have never quit my job without having stability. I trusted myself to get a better job in a year or less, so I could focus on what I do best."

Still, he says taking risks was his biggest motivation.

"When you land in a new country, make videos. Everyday I found myself with a summary of the day of things that I've never done before," Nas said.

"I don't do this for money, and I am lucky to be doing something I enjoy and making money from it."

Poor AT&T.

The way CEO Randall Stephenson describes the competitive environment in the pay-TV sector, one might think his company, the world's largest telecommunications company, is an underdog.

On stage at the Code Conference at Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. on Wednesday, Stephenson bemoaned the massive forces lined up against his company — as well as against Comcast, and Verizon— as omnipotent internet players move into their turf.

"You're going to have a hard time competing with these guys," Stephenson said, describing the challenge facing companies like AT&T. "The FANG market caps (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google) have gone up $1 trillion dollars. You better figure out how to vertically compete."

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Not surprisingly, this is the same argument that AT&T's lawyers have made to regulators who are trying to block AT&T's proposed $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, parent company of CNN and HBO.

AT&T, Comcast and traditional cable providers face more competition from the likes of Google's YouTube and Netflix. They are looking for ways to adapt to the new competitive pressures. The tech guys have cut into their market share by supplying consumers with alternatives to traditional video entertainment.

The cable and telco companies are eyeing film and TV companies as the solution to the problem and almost instinctively moving to acquire these media assets to fight the internet threat. But it's not clear that that's the right answer.

As Peter Kafka, the Recode Senior Editor interviewing Stephenson, pointed out, many of these media conglomerates have seen their revenues decline for quite some time now. Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is selling a large chunk of his empire, including the Hollywood film studio 21st Century Fox.

At at time when more experienced media players are getting out of the business, why does Stephenson think he can make it work for him?

The Roseanne challenge

ABC For starters, Stephenson said that consumption of premium content, like Hollywood films, is going up. He also said that Time Warner is sitting on a pile of valuable ad inventory while AT&T possesses a large cache of customer data. This, he suggested could help with ad sales.

This could benefit consumers too, he said. He cited as an example that AT&T would like to improve the TV-viewing experience and one way the company might do this is to charge advertisers more while requiring viewers to watch fewer ads, making his service more Netflix-esque.

Netflix charges a monthly subscription fee and does not show viewers any ads.

And what about managing creative types and building streaming-video services good enough to compete with services such as YouTube TV?

Kafka asked whether Stephenson would fire actress Roseanne Barr for posting a racist comment to Twitter had she worked for him.

"I can't imagine how you would not," Stephenson said.

Cable and Telco companies aren't tech companies

AT&T As for building technology on par with the current streaming-TV services, Stephenson suggested that it wouldn't be a problem. Others aren't so sure.

In a report published earlier this month, analyst Toni Sacconaghi Jr.of research firm AllianceBernstein, praised the low price and high quality of YouTube TV.

He wrote that he reduced his cable bill from $250 per month to $135 after cutting the cord and signing up with Google's multi-channel service, YouTube TV.

He wrote that YouTube TV "remains a shockingly good deal. And remember, this is with no yearly contract, and no hidden fees."

Sacconaghi said that while his former cable provider tried to offer him services similar to those provided by YouTube, he noticed something was very different.

"Cable companies are not tech companies," the analyst wrote. "Their apps never work quite right. The user interfaces lag. The streams don't buffer properly. Cloud recordings mysteriously fail to record."

Perhaps Stephenson's underdog self-opinion wasn't so far off of the market after all; AT&T has its work cut out for it.

Google's upcoming Pixel smartphone could feature a bigger screen, two front-facing cameras, and its very own notch, in a design that sounds very similar to the $999 Apple iPhone X.

According to a new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Google plans to release two new phones in October — the Google Pixel 3 and the Google Pixel 3 XL.

The new devices will feature dual front-facing cameras and an upgraded camera on the back. The larger device will have a nearly edge-to-edge screen, plus a notch design at the top similar to the iPhone X, Bloomberg reports.

Also new this year: Google has reportedly approached Foxconn, the same manufacturer that produces iPhones, to discuss building the Pixel phones.

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Google first introduced its line of Pixel smartphones in 2016, and released the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL in 2017. The phone is widely considered one of the best Android smartphones you can buy, but last year's models were beset by a wave of issues, including problems with the Pixel 2 XL's screen, weird clicking noises coming from the smaller Pixel 2, delivery delays, and more.

According to a report from February, Google shipped 3.9 million Pixel phones in 2017, which is equivalent to about a week of iPhone sales.

You can read more about Google's plans for the Pixel 3 over at Bloomberg.

Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla Model 3 occupants will be able to control music and the rear-seat climate with the Tesla app, get sonic blind-spot notifications, and receive an improved user interface.

On Wednesday, Musk said on Twitter that the features would arrive over the next few months.

Earlier in the day, Consumer Reports gave the Model 3 a "Recommended Buy" rating after Tesla made over-the-air improvements to the vehicle's braking system. The publication said the update reduced the distance the vehicle needed to go from 60 mph to a complete stop by 19 feet.

Tesla is able to make wireless software updates to its vehicles to improve performance, fix bugs, and add new features. Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports' director of auto testing, said in the updated review that he had never seen a wireless update result in an improved track performance for a car in his 19 years with the publication.

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In its initial review, Consumer Reports did not recommend the Model 3, citing a braking distance that was worse than any modern vehicle it had tested and criticizing the vehicle's touchscreen, ride quality, rear seat, and the amount of wind noise it produced while driving at high speeds. But the publication said it was impressed by the vehicle's range, handling, and acceleration.

Musk thanked Consumer Reports for its feedback after it published its updated review and said Tesla has made improvements to the Model 3's ride quality and noise emission and will roll out improvements to its user interface later in the month.

Musk is known for his active presence on Twitter, which he frequently uses to engage with customers and announce vehicle updates.

Whole Foods shoppers who are also Amazon Prime members should get used to seeing blue as they try and save some green.

As the discounts for Prime members roll out at Whole Foods stores across the country, customers can expect to see some other changes, too. In addition to the blue Prime signage that calls attention to the available deals, like 10% off sale items and steeper discounts on a rotating selection of other goods, employees are also being given blue, Prime-branded aprons and hats, according to Yahoo Finance.

The blue is a bit different from the green that Whole Foods employees are usually clad in. It's unclear if the new uniform will distributed to all employees or just the Prime ambassadors, who will be standing by to inform customers about Amazon Prime and the deals available through the paid membership.

The new uniforms are just the latest change as Amazon moves to bring Whole Foods further into its ecosystem.

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An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately return Business Insider's request for comment on whether the uniforms are permanent or promotional in nature.

The Prime deals rolled out earlier in May at Whole Foods stores in Florida. They were expanded Wednesday to 12 additional states: Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The deals are also now available at all of Whole Foods' 365 stores.

During a panel at Recode's Code Conference on Tuesday, Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer made a comment that likely stumped a few marketing and advertising execs in the room.

When asked if Facebook should be regulated over concerns that the company has a monopoly on internet services, Schroepfer said, "Consumers are smart—they use the products that they want. We're a very small part of the overall ads business so I think we're honest when we say we feel competition all the time."

For anyone that's been following the advertising business for the past few years, Schroepfer's comment seems outside the reality that is the duopoly of Facebook and Google, which continues to dominate the digital media industry.

It's impossible to avoid Facebook

To be clear, yes, Schroepfer's comment is accurate. Facebook made $40.65 billion in revenue during 2017, according to the company's earnings. Research firm eMarketer estimates that advertisers spent $585 billion globally last year, meaning that Facebook revenue adds up to roughly 7% of global ad budgets last year.

eMarketer

But talk to any agency, publisher, or analyst, and Facebook's large footprint on the ads business is impossible to ignore.

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Meanwhile, the trend towards higher digital ad budgets continues, and Facebook's share of the ad world is only likely to grow in coming years while print and TV spends decrease.

Here's a chart from EMarketer's report that shows how much digital ad budgets are growing:

eMarketer

Facebook is bigger than Comcast, Verizon and Disney

In fact, ad agency Zenith Media says that desktop and mobile advertising overtook traditional TV to become the biggest medium last year, growing 14% year-over-year. By 2020, internet ad spending will represent 44.6% of global ad spend, eclipsing TV's expected 31.2% of ad spend.

Zenith Media

Zenith also puts out a yearly report on the top 30 largest media companies. Facebook does not consider itself a media company, but the report's methodology considers Facebook to be one of seven "digital platforms that are funded by internet advertising."

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Between 2012 and 2016, Facebook's revenues grew 528%, placing it at No. 2 on the list. Google's parent company Alphabet was No. 1 on the list.

eMarketer Suffice to say, little about Facebook's ad business is actually little.

You can watch the full Recode interview with Facebook's Schroepfer and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg below:

"This is the sketchiest thing I've ever been a part of," says YouTuber Siraj Raval, midway through an awards ceremony billed as an event to honor both himself and other online influencers in the cryptocurrency space.

We're at the Crypto Influencer Awards Summit, which is taking place as a part of New York's blockchain week in lower Manhattan. Some of the most influential cryptocurrency evangelists on the internet have flown in to the city to receive awards in categories like "Best Crypto Musician," "Most Relatable," "Best Video Production," and "Most Funny."

Influencers like writer and producer Taryn Southern, crypto rappers TeamHODL and Coin Daddy, and YouTubers like Crypto Blood, Crypto Bobby, Cryptonauts, and I Love Crypto are all being honored for their efforts in spreading the gospel of the blockchain online.

Everyone is kinda famous — even the people who aren't famous are treated like they might be. One man, who volunteered to help set up the event so that he wouldn't have to pay $600 for a ticket, is handed a medal honoring him for his work in "Best Miscellaneous Category." (Later, he said that the event's host asked him to return the medal because they needed it back.)

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When a guest asks me to take his photo with Siraj Raval, I ask if he likes Raval's YouTube videos.

"I've never seen them," the man admits. He then explains that he wants a photo because Raval seems like he might be famous.

I am also momentarily mistaken for an internet celebrity. At one point, a would-be fan approaches me, seemingly star struck: "I absolutely love your channel," he says.

When I tell him that I've never posted a video to YouTube in my life, he shrugs.

"Hm," he says. "I could have sworn it was you."

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In the lobby, a crowd of mostly men wearing t-shirts adorned with blockchain start-up logos are chatting excitedly about the technology. Everyone seems to know each other or have heard of each other from the internet. ("This is like a chatroom, but IRL," one influencer observes.)

A beautiful woman shyly approaches a crypto rap artist called Coin Daddy.

"Coin Daddy, I need to talk to you," she says, softly. "I need you to help me make money."

In the cryptocurrency community, online influencers are a sought-after commodity.

Crypto rapper Coin Daddy reclines on a small bench. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

During one panel that takes place early on, Siraj Raval, whose channel has close to 400,000 subscribers, says that he's repeatedly dogged with emails requesting him to feature tokens for upcoming initial coin offerings, or ICOs. Taryn Southern also says that she's constantly asked to promote tokens on her channel.

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For influencers, endorsing ICOs is a lucrative but dicey market. Raval says that he charges around $50,000 to post a 20-minute explainer video on his channel discussing a company's token offering. While marketing ICOs is a profitable business, Raval says he seldom endorses companies that approach him with unsolicited requests.

"There's a lot of fishy ICOs out there," one influencer says. "And if they're not outright scams, then at the very least they're sketchy."

An entire panel at the conference is dedicated to determining whether or not a token offering is a potential scam.

"If Vitalik [Buterin, the founder of ethereum] is listed as an advisor, that's a white flag," one speaker advises.

Fraud is so endemic within the cryptocurrency community that counterfeit coin offerings are now commonly referred to as "pump and dump schemes," and often involve a few ringleaders who generate interest in a token. Once enough people have bought in, the organizers rapidly sell off their investment and evaporate from the internet with their newfound profits.

Rapper Shawn Mims, best known for his single "This is Why I'm Hot" with Erik Mendelson. The pair are launching an app geared towards musicians called RecordGram. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

For anyone hosting an ICO — legitimate or otherwise — elevating public awareness is crucial. In the past few months, efforts to crowdsource cryptocurrency capital have ranged from ingenious to bizarre: Some companies have paid people to write token names on their bodies and share the photos online while others have seemingly absconded with their investors' cash, all in the name of raising awareness.

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One of the most popular ways to attract public interest in an ICO is through online influencers. In the cryptocurrency community, influencers are regarded by many as having some of the most important opinions in the industry. As public figures, their leverage is considered so invaluable that several of the event's attendees told Business Insider that they paid $5,000 to pitch their company's token in front of the crowd for a few short minutes. (For comparison, a startup employee said that their company paid $10,000 to rent a booth for a full three days at New York's blockchain conference Consensus.)

Endorsement from an influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers can elevate a token's public profile, even if that endorsement is only tacitly implied.

At the Crypto Influencer Awards Summit, one influencer told Business Insider that a fan asked to take her photo. When she agreed, she said that he positioned her in front of his company's logo so that it would appear as though she was a supporter of his product.

Antics like this are fairly common, another influencer said.

The influencer said that he's heard of people putting mining rigs with their company's logos in busy neighborhoods and asking bypassers to pick up the rig so they can guess how much it weighs. When the person complies, they snap a photo of them holding the rig, and use the photo to showcase outside interest in the company.

The account executive for Stroken Tokens, a company that organizes crowd-sourced pornography through digital currencies, poses at his company's booth. He said there aren't enough videos of women in their twenties jumping around in bounce houses on the internet. "Trust me, I've looked." Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

Midway through the Crypto Influencer Awards Summit, a strain of skepticism surrounding the event's legitimacy begins to emerge.

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So far, the proceedings have been so disorganized that one of the influencers in attendance posted a video of the event entitled "Most Awkward Conference Start Ever" to YouTube.

For an event where the cheapest tickets cost as much as Hamilton seats, I'm not sure what I expected from the awards ceremony, but this certainly isn't it.

Admittedly, everyone still seems to be having a good time, mostly because no one is really paying attention to the panels taking place at the front of the room. The YouTube stars in attendance have expansive and charismatic personalities, and the expectation that they sit quietly and listen is equal parts ridiculous and impossible.

Phu Styles and Taryn Southern. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

People are milling about and talking loudly. The host, wearing a foam Statue of Liberty crown, interrupts the panelists again and again to remind people, in increasingly strenuous tones, to please sit down and be quiet. For the most part, her pleas are ignored.

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But despite the amount of fun everyone seems to be having, people are beginning to remark that the event is, to say the least, very weird.

Small, strange incongruities are adding up: A few of the celebrated guests who haven't been alerted to a last-minute change in venue show up nearly an hour late. Even though the event cost hundreds of dollars to attend, no one seems to be checking tickets. (No one checked whether or not I had a press pass, and I simply walked in.)

Miscellaneous suitcases are scattered haphazardly throughout the venue's back rooms, where private meetings are taking place. A guest says that the event's organizer has spent the better part of the evening outside, arguing with the police. Drinks are covertly poured into red plastic SOLO cups from behind a fold-up table throughout most of the night. A hallway bathroom has no mirror, no toilet paper, no paper towels, and somewhat mysteriously, no toilet seat.

Adam Charles, the marketing manager of the host company Boosto, later said that the NYPD made four separate visits to the venue, the Hudson Club, due to issues with entertainment and alcohol permits. He said he wasn't aware that the venue may not have had the appropriate licenses to host an event with alcohol and music.

At one point, Chandler Guo appeared wearing a gold plastic crown and yelled at the crowd to buy bitcoin. Later in the evening, he told Business Insider that he currently mines multiple bitcoins each day at his mining farm in Asia. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

When a man wearing a gold plastic crown takes to the stage midway through the proceedings, and shouts that everyone should buy bitcoin, and only bitcoin, he is roundly heckled by the crowd.

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"If you don't have bitcoin, you should go," he shouts into the mic. "You should leave here."

He continues: "We organize everyone here, for what? Just so they can buy your coin."

"Who is that guy?" I ask one heckler in the audience.

"Some Chinese bitcoin whale," he replies. (Later, the event's host, Heidi Yu, identified the man as the prolific Chinese bitcoin miner Chandler Guo, and said that his appearance on the stage was intended to be a joke. She also said that she regretted allowing him to speak. Guo himself did not respond to a request for comment.)

Some of the influencers wonder aloud whether or not the event has been thrown for the express purpose of raising awareness for the host company's forthcoming ICO.

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YouTuber Omar Bham tells me that skepticism surrounding the event began even before the evening's official proceedings kicked off. He points out a tweet posted by the influential entrepreneur and bitcoin advocate Andreas Antonopoulos who, weeks earlier, wrote that people should boycott the event because of its misleading advertising.

The Crypto Influencer Awards prominently displayed the logos of several top influencers on its site, even though they hadn't confirmed their attendance. Boosto also advertised media partnerships with various publications, including Business Insider, on the page's event invitation, even though such a partnership didn't exist. When asked why Boosto advertised Business Insider's logo on its site as a media partnership, the company's marketing manager, Adam Charles, said he thought that anyone attending the event would like what he called "free promotion."

"If we give out media passes, we put a media partnership on the site," said Charles. "I guess we should maybe ask for clarification in writing in the future. We're still learning."

Chris DeRose, who has written for Breitbart and CoinDesk, holds up awards for "Best Journalist" and "Best Podcast." Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

Online, other cryptocurrency thought leaders decried the event as "despicable and deceitful."

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At one point in the evening, the host, Heidi Yu, took to the stage to address the murmurs within the crowd. With the microphone in hand, Yu announced that the event was not a scam.

"Let me tell you guys, this is legitimate," she said.

Phu Styles, founder of the Women in Blockchain Foundation and an active figure in the cryptocurrency community, said that it's not unusual for last-minute changes to take place at cryptocurrency conferences because the industry tends to be incredibly fast-paced. Bigger than expected crowds and changes in the lineup are all par for the course.

Another influencer who received an award said that the event was weird, but that its strangeness was only to be expected.

"This is the blockchain," he said. "This is why it's called the Wild West, right?"

Crypto rappers who go by the names Cluff and Hashbrown from TeamHODL with blockchain investor Phu Styles. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

The frontman behind the crypto rap group TeamHODL, who performed at the event and goes by the nickname "Hashbrown," said he was pleased that Boosto had paid for his hotel room and plane ticket to New York. Many of the other crypto influencers who attended the event also said that Boosto compensated them for their airfare and lodging costs.

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"They could have planned it better," said Hashbrown. "But I think they're genuine. At the heart of it, they're doing right by crypto."

A few days later, I called up Siraj Raval and asked him what he thought about the Crypto Influencer Awards Summit in retrospect.

"Yeah, I think they might have hosted the event just to promote their brand," he said. "If that's what they were doing, then it's a pretty smart idea. It worked, right? I came. You came. At the very least, we all showed up for it."

As a part of a performance dedicated to the creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, Cryptonaut performer Alex Coyne lit a dollar bill on fire. Zoë Bernard/Business Insider

Omar Bham posted a video to his channel Cyrpt0 a few days later, saying that he thought the event was misleading.

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"[A lot of people] were saying that this whole conference was a scam," Bham says in the video. "I would argue, you know, you might be right. Some people paid $500 just so they could get into this room...It was an odd event."

He goes on: "It's the question of what do you get out of it? I think that's a lot of what could be a scam, which is something that's misleading in my opinion: Someone promising you something and then giving you something else. I think that's what you can call a scam."

When I asked Adam Charles what he thought about the fact that some at the event suspected it might have been a scam, he said that he was hurt by this assumption and that the event's issues were due to a last-minute change in venue that was beyond his control. He also said that he was actively reaching out to the influencers who attended to see how he might be able to improve Boosto's event participation in the future.

"The ironic thing is that I'm sick of people getting scammed," he said. "I made the cryptocurrency influencer website so that we could point out the influencers people can trust online so that they don't get scammed."

Charles said that many people interested in learning about cryptocurrencies rely exclusively on YouTube influencers for their information.

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"The thing is that crypto is so new, and all of these crypto influencers suddenly popped up out of nowhere and people don't know who to trust," he said. "I hate banks, and I hate scams. That's the whole reason I'm into crypto."

Steve Pope/Getty Images

The legendary investor Warren Buffett tried to buy a $3 billion stake in Uber earlier this year through his company, Berkshire Hathaway, Bloomberg News' Eric Newcomer and Olivia Zaleski reported Wednesday.

However, the deal fell apart because of disagreements over the size and terms of the potential investment, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the discussions. Neither Uber nor Berkshire Hathaway responded to the news outlet's request for comment.

Transportation has been a popular sector for Buffett as he decides what to do with Berkshire's estimated $160 billion cash pile that is ripe for acquiring new companies. In October, the firm bought a 39% stake in the Pilot Flying J truck-stop chain. It also owns a major stake in BYD, a Chinese electric-car maker.

News of the attempted investment comes as Uber is trying to reinvent itself. Dara Khosrowshahi, who took over as Uber's chief executive in November after the departure of the embattled founder Travis Kalanick, has been featured on advertising slots across the country apologizing for the company's past missteps.

Bloomberg reported that Khosrowshahi stepped in and asked that a deal with Berkshire be cut to $2 billion.

A Berkshire investment in Uber would have looked similar to Buffett's $5 billion deal with Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg said. In the depths of the financial crisis, Buffett loaned a lump sum to the bank in exchange for preferred stock, which ended up netting him a cool $1.6 billion profit.

That deal was brokered by Buffett's favorite banker, Byron Trott, who now runs a family office in Chicago known by his initials, BDT; it also helped finance Buffett's Pilot Flying J investment.

Read the full Bloomberg report »

For years, many TV folks who rely on advertising have privately worried that Netflix — and the on-demand, binge-watching culture that has come with it — was causing consumers to develop a disgust for ads.

On Tuesday evening at the Code Conference, we got another data point from a Hulu co-owner that suggests consumers have a desire for ad-free TV: about half of Hulu's 20 million subscribers choose to pay extra for the ad-free version.

"It's very popular," 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch said of Hulu's ad-free tier, which costs $11.99 per month ($4 more than the $7.99 ad-supported tier). "I think it's about even," he said of the amount of subscribers who choose each version. (Update: a Hulu source said that under 40% actually choose the ad-free version.)

Though the figure is nebulous, it still represents a change from when Hulu introduced the ad-free tier back in 2015. At the time, former Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins positioned it as a way to give a minority of users the choice to remove ads because their complaints were "too much of a negative" for the brand.

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"Almost overnight, the complaints about advertising on the limited-commercials plan plummeted," Hopkins said in late 2015. Mission accomplished from that perspective. But Hopkins described the ad-free version as more of a niche offering from Hulu than a fundamental change. He said the "vast majority of customers" had chosen the ad-supported version, "which is what we thought would happen."

The idea was that if you made people understand that they were choosing to save money and watch ads, they would be happier — but they would still choose ads. But there is clearly now an appetite among Hulu's user base to pay more for an ad-free product as well, though it may not be quite as large as Murdoch initially stated.

What else has changed in that time? Netflix solidified itself as a dominant player in the TV ecosystem that wields major power and has tons of influence on how the public consumes television shows.

Depending on whom you ask, the next year or two could be the best of times for Apple — or the worst.

The company has been struggling over the last two years to grow unit sales of the iPhone. Optimists see that as a golden opportunity, because they think it means there will be lots of pent-up demand for new models. But pessimists think it's a prelude for what's to come.

Count Nehal Chokshi in the latter group. In a research note on Wednesday, the Maxim Group financial analyst warned that Apple's iPhone sales will likely decline in its next fiscal year, which starts in September, dragged down by the contraction of the overall smartphone market.

"We believe the smartphone market has now reached the stage of what the PC market reached in 2012 of consistent [year-over-year] declines," Chokshi said in the note, in which he reduced his rating on Apple's shares to a "hold" from a "buy." He continued: "We see risk that [Apple] will only maintain to lose modest share in [fiscal 2019] and as such, we are reducing our iPhone estimates."

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Echoing some of Chokshi's pessimism, IDC put out its own forecast Wednesday for Apple and the smartphone industry. The market research firm expects overall smartphone shipments to decline by 0.2% this year after falling 0.3% last year. Despite that, IDC expects Apple's shipments to grow by about 2.6% this calendar year.

Although it was once known for its Mac computers, Apple is now basically a phone maker. iPhone sales accounted for about 64% of its overall revenue over the last 12 months and, quite likely, the vast majority of its profits.

But the company has been struggling for years to grow the business, a task made all the more important by the stagnation of its computer and iPad businesses and its inability to develop another hit product able to boost its revenue in a meaningful way. Apple's unit sales of iPhones grew by just 1% over the last 12 months, while its iPhone revenue grew by 10% over the same period.

Chokshi is forecasting that Apple's struggles will continue. Apple's smartphone sales are likely to be dragged down by the overall market, because the company doesn't have another hot product that will likely boost them, Chokshi said.

When the PC market went into decline, Apple actually grew its Mac business. But its Mac sales benefitted from the iPhone. Apple was able to convince many of its customers who loved its phones to buy one of its computers also, a phenomenon often referred to as the "halo effect." Don't expect history to repeat itself, Chokshi said.

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We "do not expect a halo effect to support the iPhone franchise," he said.

Accordingly, while he expects Apple to sell about 223 million iPhones this fiscal year — up about 2.9% from fiscal 2017 — he thinks that number will drop to 208 million in fiscal 2019.

As a result, he thinks the company's sales and earnings will be significantly below Wall Street's current consensus estimates. He expects Apple to post $12.62 a share in earnings next year on $258 billion in sales. On average, analysts are projecting earnings of $13.27 a share on $272 billion in sales.

Chokshi's forecast stands in stark contrast to that of Daniel Ives at GBH Insights. Ives has argued that all the iPhone owners who have held off on buying recent models will be lured in by the next generation of phones, which are expected this fall. That will lead to a "massive" wave of some 350 million iPhone sales over the next 12 to 18 months, he forecast.

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Mary Meeker, analyst with Morgan Stanley, speaks during the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010. This year’s conference, which runs through Nov. 17, is titled “Points of Control: The Battle for the Network Economy.” Photographer: Tony Avelar/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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