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

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

  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]

- 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...

    * 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.

- 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),...

* 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))

- 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),...

- 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))

* Action required: validation rule on metadata.initializers.pending[x].name is tightened. The initializer name needs to contain at least three segments separated by dots. If you create objects with pending initializers, (i.e., not relying on apiserver adding pending initializers according to initializerconfiguration), you need to update the initializer name in existing objects and in configuration files to comply to the new validation rule. ([#51283](https://github....