Seems a bit harsh to judge an entire event by the conduct of a single speaker, but to each their own, and all that.
To answer your question, yes, people are still writing malware for old systems. They don't even have to be network connected: computer viruses can spread perfectly fine from other media as well. People still send each other floppies in the mail.
It's not as prevalent as on modern mainstream systems of course, but for example, a new Amiga virus started spreading a couple of years ago. The Jackal bootblock virus overwrites the bootblock on floppy disks, possibly rendering them unusable.
"Seems a bit harsh to judge an entire event by the conduct of a single speaker [..]"
The answer was extremely rude. Had they said, they got rid of the documents, because they'd valued them differently from Jason, that'd have been rude and disappointing, but maybe understandable to some degree.
At least these things happen. A former landlady of mine had donated a rare and precious motorcycle she inherited from her father to a local museum. When she coincidentally learned about 10 years later that the museum was about to sell it, she bought it back for a lot of money. Donations can sometimes turn out not the way we want.
In my opinion, saying they just kept the boxes was appalling and beyond disrespectful and I think Jason's reaction is understandable. Of course we've only heard one side...
With regard to the show, I didn’t want to pile on, but here we go:
There weren’t that many talks (the primary thing I was interested in), the trade show section was pretty small, and there wasn’t really much for newcomers to explain why this old hardware deserves preservation.
Vintage computer meetups, like vintage car meetups, are mostly chummy in-group gatherings for the already initiated. It's where geeks of a particular brand can talk shop. (I usually don't attend them and instead go to demo parties[1], which are in no way any less esoteric.)
> There wasn’t really much for newcomers to explain why this old hardware deserves preservation.
It does and doesn't - much like old cars, record players, fighter jets, trains, radios and phones. A handful can be kept around for posterity, as museum pieces. There's a point in not forgetting how they work, since most modern stuff is to a large extent refinements and complexity layered on top of previous knowledge.
But mostly, it's just a fringe hobby. Old computers deserve preservation because someone cares deeply about them and loves tinkering with them. Just like with old cars, record players, trains and radios.
To answer your question, yes, people are still writing malware for old systems. They don't even have to be network connected: computer viruses can spread perfectly fine from other media as well. People still send each other floppies in the mail.
It's not as prevalent as on modern mainstream systems of course, but for example, a new Amiga virus started spreading a couple of years ago. The Jackal bootblock virus overwrites the bootblock on floppy disks, possibly rendering them unusable.
https://www.vht-dk.dk/amiga/desc/txt/jackal.htm