To add to what has already been said about it taking a large effort, the follow up question is then, why don’t governments fund all this effort publicly through taxes, like what is done with roads, scientific research, education, healthcare?

Well the short answer is that high-performance computing specifically is a strategic resource. Publicly funding roads only benefits the country doing the funding, so that is an easy decision to make. Meanwhile, much of the publicly funded scientific research has minimal to no strategic value (or may only be of value in states capable of that investment in the first place), so this is also an easy decision to make. But giving away technological investments in strategic ressources to rival states is a pretty bad move.

Because gaps in data are a thing? I dunno, it doesn’t really seem to change the story or the outcome. Your concerns seem overblown.

Just a thought, communities dedicated to one particular gender are often not inclusive by design, especially if you actively try to funnel people of a certain gender to certain communities. And therefore they, historically, have tended to devolve into echo chambers, and then subsequently into toxic spaces, with little room for nuanced discussion nor hosting a broad range of opinions. That’s not to say all communities are like this and most don’t start out like that either. There is value to have these communities if they themselves promote inclusion. But putting people of a particular gender into a gender-specific community is not at all the solution to “Too few women on Lemmy”.

I’d rather see the focus on making the general communities be welcoming to everyone equally.