- The kube-proxy command line flag `--proxy-port-range`, which was previously deprecated and non-functional, has now been removed. ([#126293](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/126293), [@aroradaman](https://github.com/aroradaman)) [SIG Network]
- The kube-scheduler added scheduling hints for the InterPodAffinity plugin.
  These hints allow the scheduler to retry scheduling a Pod

- The API server now detects and fails on startup if there are conflicting issuers between JWT authenticators and service account configurations. Previously, such configurations would run but could be inconsistently effective depending...

  - When registering with a 1.17+ API server, a CustomResourceDefinition conversion webhook can now request that only `v1` ConversionReview requests be sent to them. Previously, conversion webhooks were required to support receiving `v1beta1` ConversionReview requests...

    *  - AWS_SSH_KEY, previously assumed to be an absolute path can now be either relative or absolute
    *  - LOCAL_SSH_KEY (for local and vsphere providers) was previously assumed to be a filename relative to ~/.ssh but can now also be an absolute path
    *  - KUBE_SSH_KEY (for skeleton provider) was previously assumed to be a filename relative to ~/.ssh but can now also be an absolute path

* support mount options in azure file ([#54674](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/54674), [@andyzhangx](https://github.com/andyzhangx))
* kube-apiserver: fixed --oidc-username-prefix and --oidc-group-prefix flags which previously weren't correctly enabled ([#56175](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/56175), [@ericchiang](https://github.com/ericchiang))

- `kube-scheduler` implemented scheduling hints for the `NodeUnschedulable` plugin.
  The scheduling hints allow the scheduler to only retry scheduling a `Pod`
  that was previously rejected by the `NodeSchedulable` plugin if a new `Node` or a `Node` update sets `.spec.unschedulable` to false. ([#119396](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/119396), [@wackxu](https://github.com/wackxu))

- Fixed a race condition on API server startup ensuring previously created webhook configurations are effective before the first write request is admitted. ([#95783](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/95783), [@roycaihw](https://github.com/roycaihw)) [SIG API Machinery]

- Sometimes, the scheduler incorrectly placed a pod in the "unschedulable" queue instead of the "backoff" queue. This happened when some plugin previously declared the pod as "unschedulable" and then in a later attempt encounters some other error. Scheduling of that pod then got delayed by up to five minutes, after which periodic flushing moved the pod back into the "active" queue. ([#120334](htt...

- Fixed a race condition on API server startup ensuring previously created webhook configurations are effective before the first write request is admitted. ([#95783](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/95783), [@roycaihw](https://github.com/roycaihw)) [SIG API Machinery]

* If a pod has a running instance, the stats of its previously terminated instances will not show up in the kubelet summary stats any more for CRI runtimes like containerd and cri-o. ([#77426](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/77426), [@Random-Liu](https://github.com/Random-Liu))