- Added new option to the `InterPodAffinity` scheduler plugin to ignore existing
  pods` preferred inter-pod affinities if the incoming pod has no preferred inter-pod
  affinities. This option can be used as an optimization for higher scheduling throughput
  (at the cost of an occasional pod being scheduled non-optimally/violating existing
  pods preferred inter-pod affinities). To enable this scheduler option, set the

- ACTION_REQUIRED

- Fixed CEL estimated cost of `replace()` to handle a zero length replacement string correctly.
  Previously this would cause the estimated cost to be higher than it should be. ([#120097](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/120097), [@jpbetz](https://github.com/jpbetz)) [SIG API Machinery]

- Kube-apiserver: `gzip` compression switched from level 4 to level 1 to improve large list call latencies in exchange for higher network bandwidth usage (10-50% higher). This increases the headroom before very large unpaged list calls exceed request timeout limits. ([#112299](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/112299), [@shyamjvs](https://github.com/shyamjvs))