*   The default `auto-detect` behavior of the kubelet's `--cloud-provider` flag is removed.
    *   You can manually set `--cloud-provider=auto-detect`, but be aware that this behavior will be removed completely in a future version.

- Stdin is now only passed to client-go exec credential plugins when it is detected to be an interactive terminal. Previously, it was passed to client-go exec plugins when **stdout** was detected to be an interactive terminal. ([#99654](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99654), [@ankeesler](https://github.com/ankeesler)) [SIG API Machinery and Auth]

    * Logging Agent Improvements
    * Bump logging agent version to 0.2-1.5.33-1-k8s-1.
    * Appropriately set log severity for k8s_container.
    * Fix detect exceptions plugin to analyze message field instead of log field.
    * Fix detect exceptions plugin to analyze streams based on local resource id.
    * Disable the metadata agent for monitored resource construction in logging.

    * Logging Agent Improvements
    * Bump logging agent version to 0.2-1.5.33-1-k8s-1.
    * Appropriately set log severity for k8s_container.
    * Fix detect exceptions plugin to analyze message field instead of log field.
    * Fix detect exceptions plugin to analyze streams based on local resource id.
    * Disable the metadata agent for monitored resource construction in logging.

- The `--leader-elect*` CLI args are now honored in scheduler. ([#105915](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/105915), [@Huang-Wei](https://github.com/Huang-Wei))
- The `--leader-elect*` CLI args are now honored in the scheduler. ([#105712](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/105712), [@Huang-Wei](https://github.com/Huang-Wei))

     disabled by setting the `--horizontal-pod-autoscaler-use-rest-clients` flag to `false`.

### Cluster Lifecycle

- The `auto-detect` behavior of the kubelet's `--cloud-provider` flag is deprecated.

  - In version 1.8, the default value for the kubelet's `--cloud-provider` flag is `auto-detect`. Be aware that it works only on GCE, AWS and Azure.

    * Logging Agent Improvements
    * Bump logging agent version to 0.2-1.5.33-1-k8s-1.
    * Appropriately set log severity for k8s_container.
    * Fix detect exceptions plugin to analyze message field instead of log field.
    * Fix detect exceptions plugin to analyze streams based on local resource id.
    * Disable the metadata agent for monitored resource construction in logging.

* fix: retry detach azure disk issue ([#78700](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/78700), [@andyzhangx](https://github.com/andyzhangx))
    * try to only update vm if detach a non-existing disk when got <200, error> after detach disk operation

- Added a flag to kubectl version to detect whether a client/server version mismatch was outside the officially supported range. ([#127365](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/127365), [@omerap12](https://github.com/omerap12))

* fix: retry detach azure disk issue ([#78700](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/78700), [@andyzhangx](https://github.com/andyzhangx))
    * try to only update vm if detach a non-existing disk when got <200, error> after detach disk operation