Saturday Night Live's season finale was full of surprises, goodbyes and guest stars. While it was hosted by Oscar-winner Ben Affleck, the show-stealer was a tribute to eight-season cast member Bill Hader, who announced last week that he would be leaving the cast

The Saturday Night Live cast paid appropriate homage to Hader and his beloved character Stefon with a surprising wedding sequence. In the sketch, Stefon — the city correspondent for "Weekend Update" — tells Seth Meyers he is leaving to get married. Meyers, finally coming to terms with his overwhelming love for Stefon (after some advice from former co-anchor Amy Poehler) chases after him in true The Graduate, wedding-crashers style Read more...

A store in Australia made headlines earlier this year for charging consumers $5 to just walk through the door. The decision was made following the growth of "showrooming," a familiar concept when a person heads into a physical store to check out merchandise before finding the same product at a cheaper price online.

Thanks to free shipping and returns, as well as low or no taxes — hello, Amazon — it makes sense for consumers to do online price comparisons before making a purchase

According to analytics firm ForeSee Results, about 70% of consumers use a mobile phone in a retail store to research and accompany their shopping experiences. Data from U.K.-based design agency Foolproof also supports the growth of in-store mobile usage. In fact, a recent report revealed 24% of British consumers "showroomed" during the 2012 holiday shopping season — and 40% of that number bought from a competitor after comparing prices. Read more...

Even the simplest things in life are getting tech overhauls, so the next time you think it's too much work to wave a laser or string in the air to keep your cat entertained, consider this new toy that is powered by the sun.

Called the Solar Chaser, the device is essentially a cat toy on a wand that sticks to the window with suction cups. When it gets enough light, the toy — which has an accompanying string — will move, encouraging the cat to chase it.

SEE ALSO: Beyond Barrel Roll: 10 Hidden Google Tricks

You can also swap out the dangling toy with your cat's favorite one, too. The Solar Chaser will cost you $40 via SolarChasers.com, but at least you can sit back, relax and watch your pet go crazy in peace Read more...

This is not gonna be pretty. Most of us have enough trouble pulling it together with our own DNA-crafted faces, but it's not a pleasant sight when technology helps you swap faces with an uncle, grandma, or far worse, a pet

The results are definitely not attractive, but they are equal parts funny and disturbing

SEE ALSO: 15 People Who Totally Take Things Too Literally

Keep your faces to yourself, people (and animals).

Image courtesy of Reddit, Mister_Bidwell

Image courtesy of Reddit, GxZombie

Image courtesy of Reddit, HellaAaron

Image courtesy of Reddit, GiPwner

Image courtesy of Reddit, idklmaorofl Read more...

"Facebook was not originally created to be a company," CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in his SEC Registration letter a little more than three months before Facebook went public on May 18, 2012. "It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected."

In the year since the Facebook IPO, some things haven't changed: Zuckerberg still sports his trademark hoodies, employees still rate their company and their founder highly, and Facebook still talks about its grand mission to make the world more open and connected. But the era of Facebook operating or being perceived as anything other than a corporation seems more distant with each passing day Read more...

Imagine you're a truck driver. You're coming up to a tunnel that might be too low for your truck to fit under, but you're not sure. Suddenly, a gigantic red stop sign appears to obstruct the road in front of the tunnel entrance, giving you no doubt. Stop!

You're not going to overlook that explicit warning

What is this sorcery? See the video above to find out more about how this remarkable sign is created with a instantaneously produced sheet of water and — you guessed it — frickin' lasers

SEE ALSO: Laser System Paints Information on the Road Ahead

These pop-up stop signs made by light show company Laservision are part of an experiment that's been taking place in Australia since 2007, successfully preventing semi trucks from suddenly turning into unintended convertibles. This one is in the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, and there are several others installed in the city. Read more...

It was a big week in tech, the week of Google I/O. But apart from the annual Google geekfest that its developers conference is, there was much more. We were in San Francisco to cover Google I/O, but we also kept an eye on the rest of the world of tech for Top 10 Tech This Week

The biggest story of the week — which in turn contained countless big stories — was Google I/O, the company's developers conference. Even though this time nobody parachuted onto the conference building wearing Google Glass, the conference was still full of juicy announcements: new Hangouts, new Google Maps, a 3.5-hour keynote featuring CEO Larry Page and much more Read more...

Ah, the benefit of hindsight.

Those who rushed to buy Facebook stock at its initial public offering price of $38 per share on May 18, 2012, are likely a little disappointed with their investment one year later. Though the stock has recovered from its $17.55 September 4 low, the price of the stock today, at a little more than $26 per share, is still closer to its all-time low than its opening price.

What if investors had put their money into other technology or Internet companies? Statistics database Statista looked at how a $1,000 investment made on the day of Facebook's IPO would have performed nearly one year later in the chart below. Read more...

It can be tough to keep up with all the new apps released every week. But you're in luck — Mashable takes care of that for you, creating a roundup each weekend of our favorite new and updated apps.

This week Google launched its own streaming music service, and another music service got a new mode designed specifically to be used while driving.

Airbnb's Android app was updated with some new tools for hosts, and Highlight got a little more personal.

Check out the gallery above for a look at this week's highlights.

Still looking for more? See last week's Apps You Don't Want to Miss for more great apps worth a look Read more...

There are two sides to every story, even a viral video.

In the top comments above, we've highlighted our readers' reactions to the contentious campaign against Abercrombie and Fitch. After the company's CEO Mike Jeffries publicly stated that he "doesn't want larger people shopping in his store," Greg Karber created a video in which he gives the company's branded clothing to homeless people for free.

Karber's intention was to publicly condemn Jeffries' statement, but some of our commenters had an adverse reaction to the video. We've highlighted the debate in the gallery above. Which side of the controversy do you agree with? Let us know in the comments section below Read more...

The obscure members of the Channel 4 News Team have assembled in the first trailer for Anchorman 2, the sequel to 2004's popular comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Dubbed Anchorman: The Legend Continues, the flick hits theaters Dec. 20.

Will Ferrell returns as anchorman Ron Burgundy alongside his misfit squad consisting of sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner), field reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) and meteorologist Brick Tamland (Steve Carell)

SEE ALSO: Watch the 6-Second 'Star Trek Into Darkness' Homemade Vine Trailer

While not in the teaser, Christina Applegate will reprise her role as spunky go-getter Veronica Corningstone, and Kristin Wiig will join the crew as Tamland's wife Read more...

Many animals are so in tune with the human species, that it might freak you out. Dogs can sense danger or sadnessMonkeys can use iPads. Honey badgers are all, "IDGAF," and eating pistachios.

SEE ALSO: 20 Animals So Ugly They're Cute

If you think that's crazy, you haven't seen the worst of it. We took these animals to a whole new level of anthropomorphism, thanks to the power of Photoshop.

Mashable composite, image via iStockphoto, Ksenia_Pelevina, pzAxe

Mashable composite, image via iStockphoto, lnzyx, pzAxe

Mashable composite, image via iStockphoto, CraigRJD, gokhanilgaz Read more...

In the 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the title hero sets out to find the Holy Grail with only a diary and a map without any labels — and he has to find the grail before anyone else does.

SEE ALSO: More Comics on Mashable

In this comic, Josh Mecouch of Formal Sweatpants shows us that there was an even more difficult final task than the one we saw in the film — and it's one that we non-adventurers often fail.

Comic illustration by Josh Mecouch, Formal Sweatpants. Published with permission; all rights reserved. Read more...

Low-budget recreations of movie trailers are nothing new. We've seen plenty on YouTube, but one Star Trek Into Darkness fan this week leveraged Twitter's six-second video service, Vine, in a crafty way to imitate the new film's trailer

Frank Danna of Texas spent three hours storyboarding scenes, cutting craft paper and filming his stop-motion Vine trailer, he told Mashable.

"My focus was to make an incredibly simple, minimalist presentation of the trailer, wrapped up in a six-second loop," he said. "It wasn't intended to be a shot-for-shot comparison for obvious reasons, but I did want to highlight the main crux of the trailer in a simple way using lower-budget means." Read more...

It's easy to forget how sky-high expectations were for the Facebook IPO. The day before the company went public, some investors reasonably assumed that by the close of the market, Facebook would be worth $140 billion since the average first-day pop for tech companies was 32%

Forbes also urged investors to "Buy Early And Buy As Much As You Can." A poll of 800 people determined that Facebook would close at $55 on its first day as a public company, putting it in that ethereal $140 billion range.

A year later, we all know how things actually turned out. Facebook's stock price jumped a mere $0.23 on that first day. Over the next few months, the stock bottomed out at $17.55 — less than half its opening price. The backlash was so fierce that there was even a movement to dump CEO Mark Zuckerberg in favor of a more seasoned chief executive. Viewed in cold economic terms, the Facebook IPO was a bust Read more...

NASA may have retired the space shuttle, but that doesn't mean amateur explorers need to stay grounded, right?

The Kua Fu Initiative is a photo project raising funds through Kickstarter to send a payload capsule into the lower stratosphere to capture HD photos and videos. Doug Cambron, the project's founder and a safety system supervisor from Perryville, Mo., said the idea for the mission stemmed from a lifelong curiosity of exploring the sky.

"Everyone who's grown up has thought at one point or another, 'Man, I really want to be an astronaut,'" he told Mashable. "This is a kind of a way to make that small bit of a dream come true." Read more...

When Marc Okrand graduated from Berkeley University with a degree in linguistics decades ago, he never guessed he'd become the mastermind behind a language with one of the biggest cult followings in the world.

Klingon — the official language spoken by the fictional warrior race in the Star Trek franchise — has taken on a life of its own. In addition to being newly added to Bing's language translator feature, it's been translated into Shakespeare, has its own language institute and is spoken all over the world.

Okrand visits the set of each new Star Trek film — the latest one opened this weekend — and teaches the actors how to pronounce and approach such a harsh-sounding, complicated language. So complicated, in fact, he still has to reference the dictionary he created to get it right. Read more...

Satellite TV provider DirecTV reportedly is considering buying streaming video service Hulu, which would strip away some or all ownership from Comcast Corporation, News Corporation and Walt Disney Company. A similar scenario took place two years ago when DirecTV initially wanted to own Hulu

Mashable has reached out to DirecTV. Hulu declined to comment. A source close to the matter told The Wall Street Journal that DirecTV is mulling an agreement that could expand its TV Everywhere service, which lets subscribers access programming from the web and on mobile devices. Meanhwile, Bloomberg Businessweek reports, via two unnamed sources, the discussions between DirecTV and Hulu are "at an early stage." Read more...

Sit back for a couple of minutes and take an exhilarating journey through Peru and Bolivia in this beautiful stop-motion video by Polish artist Piotr Wancerz of Timelapse Media. It's an elaborate composite of 12,000 photos and video frames, shot over a three-week period during Piotr's first trip to South America.

You'll see his model and traveling companion seemingly standing still while moving through breathtaking South American landscapes, some of which appear to spin around her. Notice the dazzling variety of locations in Peru and Bolivia, including Arequipa, Chivay, Colca Canyon, Cusco, Huacachina, Ica, Laguna Colorada, La Paz, Lima, Machu Picchu, Puno, Salar de Uyuni, Solar de Manana geysers, Termas de Polques and Valles de Rocas. Read more...

At the beginning of this year, Facebook overtook Google Maps as the most-used mobile app in the U.S. The social network giant also recently introduced a controversial new mobile interface, Facebook Home. Earlier this week, Home hit 1 million downloads. Love it or hate it (or both), Facebook is a cornerstone of the mobile experience

But being in the spotlight means taking your share of criticism. And if the Facebook app represents our smartphone-centric lives ... well, it has a few issues. None of them are deal breakers, but Mashable loves to tinker. Read on to see our list of things we would change about the Facebook app. Read more...