They're a recap of Matt Cutts quotes from the last 12 months. If these peices of advice helped you recover from Penguin, you'd see a lot more reports of Penguin recoveries from Penguin 1.0. I didn't really hear of recoveries from Penguin refreshes in October 2012 or May 2013. There's a whole thread on how the disavow tool simply didn't work (in regards to helping recoveries). Also misuse of the reconsideration request service isn't advisable either (use it only for manual penalties).