Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its cheating because you don't have to think about focusing your lens. At f/8 you have a reasonable hyper-local distance, and so for instance everything from 2m to infinity is sufficiently sharp. This kind of advice was given before the advent of good enough autofocus where indeed you've rely on the machine to focus your imagine. But at the same time you delegate the choice of the subject to the machine instead of sp…
Hyperfocal. Not hyper-local.
Indeed, my autocorrect and lack of rereading is to blame.