When attending a hacker conference, even if it's in Hawaii, it's important to look the part. No hacker will respect any IT person in a suit and tie. We'll just think you're a lamer that can't even use basic Unix commands such as "vi" or "awk".
You need to be somewhat grundge.
Not sure where the fingerless gloves came from ... as they make typing extremely annoying (I think it might have come from the TV show "Mr Robot").
But even I think they are really needed now to "complete the HACKER LOOK"