I'd love to know how many (if any) people saw the title and thought cracked screen and how many people voted the story knowing it was about cracked screens...

I don't vote without at least skimming, so I voted after reading it. In fact my vote was largely influenced by 2 things:

1. interesting study

2. relief that it isnt about cracked software or cracked servers :)

If I'm on hacker news and I see the word cracking, I immediately think piracy/etc. Cracktros. Not broken glass. :P

If I'm on hacker news and I see the word cracking, I immediately hope this'll be some old school "let's open up IDA and see what's what here" article.

I think the ambiguity was on purpose to attract clicks. It got me as well.