The golden rule to avoid bricking is to minimize the write access to FLASH (chip)
In your PS3 model the FLASH chip has 16mb capacity... the contents of this chip is what you should not mess around with
Write access to FLASH happens when:
-Installing firmware (so dont abuse of firmware installations, and be careful with what you install)
-Specific functions of A LOT of programs (so read about the programs you use to understand how it works before using them)
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Edit:
Technically there is another way to brick a PS3... by corrupting SYSCON (chip) contents
But there are not much programs ables to do this