* kubeadm: kubelets in kubeadm clusters now disable the readonly port (10255). If you're relying on unauthenticated access to the readonly port, please switch to using the secure port (10250). Instead, you can now use ServiceAccount tokens when talking to the secure port, which will make it easier to get access to, for example, the `/metrics` endpoint of the kubelet, securely. ([#64187](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/64187), [@luxas](https://github.com/luxas))

- [`KT-56421`](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-56421) Gradle: plugin should not use BasePluginExtension deprecated properties
- [`KT-55241`](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-55241) Gradle: the VariantImplementationFactories build service state is not persistent making impossible to access factories with configuration cache lazily

of a <a href="#Function_declarations">function declaration</a>
or <a href="#Function_literals">function literal</a> reserves
storage for a named variable.

Calling the built-in function <a href="#Allocation"><code>new</code></a>
or taking the address of a <a href="#Composite_literals">composite literal</a>
allocates storage for a variable at run time.
Such an anonymous variable is referred to via a (possibly implicit)

### SIG-vmware

SIG-VMware development was primarily focused on fixing bugs for the in-tree cloud provider, starting the development of the external cloud provider and taking ownership of the cluster-api provider for vSphere.

In-tree cloud provider bug fixes and improvements included:
- Adding initial Zones support to the provider using vSphere Tags

- Show a warning when `volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-class` annotation is used in pv or pvc ([#117036](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117036), [@haoruan](https://github.com/haoruan)) [SIG Storage]

* [stable] Expose storage usage metrics

  * The available capacity of a given Persistent Volume (PV) is available by calling the Kubernetes metrics API.

* [stable] Volume plugin metrics

  * Success and latency metrics for all Kubernetes calls are available by calling the Kubernetes metrics API. You can request volume operations, including mount, unmount, attach, detach, provision, and delete.

* kubectl cp now safely allows unpacking of symlinks that may point outside the destination directory ([#82384](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/82384), [@tallclair](https://github.com/tallclair))
* Limit use of tags when calling EC2 API to prevent API throttling for very large clusters ([#76749](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/76749), [@mcrute](https://github.com/mcrute))

  Jobs tracked with finalizers have the annotation batch.kubernetes.io/job-tracking.
  If the annotation is present and the user attempts to remove it, the control plane adds it back.
  The annotation `batch.kubernetes.io/job-tracking` is now deprecated.

   ([#103523](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/103523), [@divyenpatel](https://github.com/divyenpatel))
- `MaxUnavailable` for `StatefulSets`, allows faster `RollingUpdate` by taking down more than 1 pod at a time.
  The number of pods you want to take down during a `RollingUpdate` is configurable using `maxUnavailable` parameter.

* Add --request-timeout to kube-apiserver to make global request timeout configurable. ([#51415](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/51415), [@jpbetz](https://github.com/jpbetz))
* Fix for Nodes in vSphere lacking an InternalIP. ([#48760](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/48760)) ([#49202](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/49202), [@cbonte](https://github.com/cbonte))