- Fixes the bug in PodTopologySpread that only happens with QHint enabled, 

    * If you have to use the legacy in-tree cloud providers, you can rearrange your config like the example below. In case you need the `cloud-config` file (located in `{cloud-config-path}`), you can mount it into the API Server and controller-manager containers using ExtraVolumes like the example below.

- The `--bind-address` parameter in kube-proxy is misleading, no port is opened...

* The Container Runtime Interface (CRI) version has increased from v1alpha1 to v1alpha2. Runtimes implementing the CRI will need to update to the new version, which configures container namespaces using an enumeration rather than booleans. This change to the alpha API is not backwards compatible; implementations of the CRI such as containerd, will need to update to the new API version. ([#58973](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/58973), [@verb](https://github.com/verb))

  before updating a cluster where resourceclaims, resourceclaimtemplates, deviceclasses, or resourceslices might have been stored using Kubernetes < 1.32, delete all of those resources before updating and recreate them as needed while running Kubernetes >= 1.32. ([#132000](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/132000), [@pohly](https://github.com/pohly)) [SIG Etcd, Node, Scheduling and Testing]

- Promoted `StatefulSetStartOrdinal` to stable. This means `--feature-gates=StatefulSetStartOrdinal=true` are not needed on kube-apiserver and kube-controller-manager binaries and they'll be removed soon following policy at https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/using-api/deprecation-policy/#deprecation. ([#125374](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/125374),...

- Improved how the API server responds to **list** requests where the response format negotiates to Protobuf. List responses in Protobuf are marshalled one element at the time, drastically reducing memory needed to serve large collections. Streaming list responses can be disabled via the `StreamingCollectionEncodingToProtobuf` feature gate. ([#129407](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/129407), [@serathius](https://github.com/serathius)) [SIG API...

- Fix: Bug in `kube-proxy` latency metrics to calculate only the latency value for the `Endpoints` that are created after it starts running. This is needed because all the `Endpoints` objects are processed on restarts, independently when they were. ([#100861](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/100861), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea))

- HTTP/2 connection health check is enabled by default in all Kubernetes clients to fix persistently broken connections (https://github.com/kubernetes/client-go/issues/374). If needed, users can tune the feature via the HTTP2_READ_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS and HTTP2_PING_TIMEOUT_SECONDS environment variables. The feature is disabled if HTTP2_READ_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS is set to 0. ([#100376](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/100376),...

- Kubectl port-forward for Windows containers was added in v1.15. To use it, you’ll need to build a new pause image including WinCAT. ([#75479](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/75479), [@benmoss](https://github.com/benmoss))
- We’re working to simplify the Windows node join experience with better scripts and kubeadm. Scripts and doc updates are still in the works, but some of the needed improvements are included in 1.15.  These include: