* owner references can be set during creation without deletion power ([#63403](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/63403), [@deads2k](https://github.com/deads2k))
* Lays groundwork for OIDC distributed claims handling in the apiserver authentication token checker. ([#63213](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/63213), [@filmil](https://github.com/filmil))

* [alpha] Improve Flex volume deployment

  * Flex volume driver deployment is simplified in the following ways:

    * New driver files can now be automatically discovered and initialized without requiring a kubelet or controller-manager restart.

    * A sample DaemonSet to deploy Flexvolume drivers is now available.

    * - kubeadm upgrade apply supports all standard ways of specifying version via labels. Examples: stable-1.8, latest-1.8, ci/latest-1.9 and similar.

### Auth

- Server Side Apply now treats LabelSelector fields as atomic (meaning the entire selector is managed by a single writer and updated together), since they contain interrelated and inseparable fields that do not merge in intuitive ways. ([#93901](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/93901), [@jpbetz](https://github.com/jpbetz)) [SIG API Machinery, Auth, CLI, Cloud Provider, Cluster Lifecycle, Instrumentation, Network, Node, Storage and Testing]

- Server Side Apply now treats all <Some>Selector fields as atomic (meaning the entire selector is managed by a single writer and updated together), since they contain interrelated and inseparable fields that do not merge in intuitive ways. ([#97989](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/97989), [@Danil-Grigorev](https://github.com/Danil-Grigorev)) [SIG API Machinery]

  
  - bazel: output go_binary rule directly from go_binary_conditional_pure
    
    From: [@mikedanese](https://github.com/mikedanese):
    Instead of aliasing. Aliases are annoying in a number of ways. This is
    specifically bugging me now because they make the action graph harder to
    analyze programmatically. By using aliases here, we would need to handle