- Kube-apiserver: gzip compression switched from level 4 to level 1 to improve large list call latencies in exchange for higher network bandwidth usage (10-50% higher). This increases the headroom before very large unpaged list calls exceed request timeout limits. ([#112398](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/112398), [@shyamjvs](https://github.com/shyamjvs)) [SIG API Machinery]

* Update the GCE windows node image to include hot fixes since July. ([#81233](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/81233), [@YangLu1031](https://github.com/YangLu1031))
* switch to VM Update call in attach/detach disk operation, original CreateOrUpdate call may lead to orphaned VMs or blocked resources ([#81208](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/81208), [@andyzhangx](https://github.com/andyzhangx))

### Bug or Regression

- Avoid GCE API calls when initializing GCE CloudProvider for Kubelets.

e/ControllerUnpublishVolume, and NodePublishVolume/NodeUnpublishVolume operations. Before this change all API calls had to fetch key/value stored in secret and use it to authenticate/authorize these operations. With this change API calls receive key/value as a input parameter so they not need to know where and how credentials were stored and fetched. Main goal was to make these API calls CO (Container Orchestrator) agnostic.  ([#60118](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/60118), [@sbez...

		// wrote to disk - since that amounts to "copying" from a "copy"
		// instead of "copying" from source, we need the stream to be seekable
		// to ensure that we can make fan-out calls concurrently.
		buf := bytebufferpool.Get()
		defer func() {
			buf.Reset()
			bytebufferpool.Put(buf)
		}()

		md5w := md5.New()

		// Maximum allowed fan-out object size.

     */
    @Nullable V get();

    /** Returns the entry which contains this {@link WeakValueReference}. */
    E getEntry();

    /** Unsets the referenced value. Subsequent calls to {@link #get} will return {@code null}. */
    void clear();

    /**
     * Returns a freshly created {@link WeakValueReference} for the given {@code entry} (and on the

### Other notable changes

* GCE provider: Limit Filter calls to regexps rather than large blobs ([#27741](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/27741), [@zmerlynn](https://github.com/zmerlynn))

    var shouldClose: Boolean = false
    var lastSocket: Socket? = null

    override fun connectionAcquired(
      call: Call,
      connection: Connection,
    ) {
      lastSocket = connection.socket()
    }

    override fun requestHeadersStart(call: Call) {
      if (shouldClose) {
        lastSocket!!.close()
      }
    }
  }

  @Test
  fun socketFailureOnLargeRequestHeaders() {

- K8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/util/runtime: Added support for new calls to handle panics and errors in the context where they occur. `PanicHandlers` and `ErrorHandlers` now must accept a context parameter for that. Log output is structured instead of unstructured. ([#121970](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121970),...

* Remove Job also from .status.active for Replace strategy ([#35420](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/35420), [@soltysh](https://github.com/soltysh))
* Update PodAntiAffinity to ignore calls to subresources ([#35608](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/35608), [@soltysh](https://github.com/soltysh))