- Fixed bug in CRD Validation Rules (beta) and `ValidatingAdmissionPolicy` (alpha) where all admission requests could result in `internal error: runtime error: index out of range [3] with length 3 evaluating rule: <rule name>` under certain circumstances. ([#114857](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/114857), [@jpbetz](https://github.com/jpbetz))

- Kube-proxy iptables: new metric sync_proxy_rules_iptables_total that exposes the number of rules programmed per table in each iteration ([#99653](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99653), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea)) [SIG Instrumentation and Network]

    * action required: Cloud providers other than GCE might want to update their deployments or sample yaml files to reuse the role created via add-on.

### Other notable changes

`settings/v1alpha1`, and `scheduling/v1alpha1` APIs are disabled by default.

* The `system:node` role is no longer automatically granted to the `system:nodes` group in new clusters. The role gives broad read access to resources, including secrets and configmaps. Use the `Node` authorization mode to authorize the nodes in new clusters. To continue providing the `system:node` role to the members of the `system:nodes` group, create an installation-specific `ClusterRoleBinding` in the installation....

    * action required: Cloud providers other than GCE might want to update their deployments or sample yaml files to reuse the role created via add-on.

### Other notable changes

      - `scheduler_binding_latency_microseconds` -> `scheduler_binding_duration_seconds`
      - `kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_latency_microseconds` -> `kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds`
      - `apiserver_request_latencies` -> `apiserver_request_duration_seconds`
      - `apiserver_dropped_requests` -> `apiserver_dropped_requests_total`

- Change GCP ILB firewall names to contain the `k8s-fw-` prefix like the rest of the firewall rules. This is needed for consistency and also for other components to identify the firewall rule as k8s/service-controller managed. ([#84622](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/84622), [@prameshj](https://github.com/prameshj))

  - The built-in `system:aws-cloud-provider` cluster role is deprecated and will not be auto-created in a future release. Deployments using the AWS cloud provider should grant required permissions to the...

([#67349](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/67349), [@mikedanese](https://github.com/mikedanese))
- The admin RBAC role now aggregates edit and view.  The edit RBAC role now aggregates view.  ([#66684](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/66684), [@deads2k](https://github.com/deads2k))

- The kube-proxy `sync_proxy_rules_iptables_total` metric has now reverted back
  to its pre-1.27 behavior of tracking the total number of iptables rules that
  kube-proxy is responsible for, rather than only counting the number of rules
  that it re-synced on the last sync. The new `sync_proxy_rules_iptables_last`