I'm not sure who's running things there (if anyone) but he had said he turned over duties to some friends. Milw0rm was (is?) a source of quality PoC exploit code, much of which was zero-day. For security research, it used to be a great resource. I, too, have noticed it hadn't been very active lately, so it's hard telling who (again, if anyone) is running things there.

Also, I haven't really seen any other posts about str0ke's death, other than ones linking to bl4cksecurity or mentions of it quite a while after the initial post there.

It's not that I would consider it a hoax, but it highlights one of the oddities of pseudonymous culture. First and foremost, I was under the impression he was in his late 20s from his profiles elsewhere on the web, and the link says he was born in '74. Again, pseudonymous culture means that data could be false, accounts could be impostors, etc.