[OpenAlgorithm]

I know from experience that most people don't know the key combos to open in their chosen windows.

I always use Ctrl + T, but when I'm demonstrating something or somebody is watching me browse they almost always ask what I have done when I use the combo.

It's dangerous to assume that your readers are as technically proficient as yourself. But I can see in certain citations why it might be applicable, e.g. on Hacker News the majority of their readers are going to know the keyword shotcuts because that's their target market.

I do think that the blog choosing for you can be a pain, but the combos still work on the majority of links and for those who don't know them you can keep them on your site by using the target= in the link HTML, probably the best of both worlds.