When you're not actively trying to click on anything, you shouldn't have to be overly worried about where your cursor is. It's especially stupid that your cursor can be in a safe, non-reactive area of the article, and then you scroll down and now your cursor is hovering over a link and the pop-up shows up even though your cursor didn't move.

Hovering shouldn't be used for something this big. It should only be used for things very similar to its original purpose in web browsing: small visual feedback to indicate that the element under the cursor is interactive and will make something significant happen after the user clicks. (But the interactivity of an element still needs to be apparent even before or without the visual confirmation that comes from hovering. This is even more important in a world with touchscreens where hover events aren't available—and that lack of hover events for a large portion of users is another strong reason not to put any big important functionality behind those events.)

I'll do what I like with links, and I appreciate it when they behave in the conventional manner.