figured it out. It was the extension HTTPS Everywhere. Thanks rafaelluik for your suggestion, though.

No luck with flushing the dns cashe. btw, all other browsers on my comp can get there without an issue, even opera 12.

Is it just me that can't access pcworld.com with Opera 22? I've disabled Adblock Plus without improvement.

Discover blinks for me, too. Using Windows 7 32bit and the latest version of Opera. Personally, I find it very annoying. So much so, that I find myself not using the discover feature much at all. I give the page plenty of time to load the images before even starting to scroll...which doesn't help a bit.