- To avoid soft-deleted pods incorrectly affecting scale up replica count calculations, the HPA controller will stop counting soft-deleted pods for scaling purposes. ([#67067](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/67067), [@moonek](https://github.com/moonek))

* By default, clusters on GCE no longer send RequestReceived audit event, if advanced audit is configured. ([#52343](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/52343), [@crassirostris](https://github.com/crassirostris))
* [BugFix] Soft Eviction timer works correctly ([#52046](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/52046), [@dashpole](https://github.com/dashpole))

* By default, clusters on GCE no longer sends RequestReceived audit event, if advanced audit is configured. ([#52343](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/52343), [@crassirostris](https://github.com/crassirostris))
* [BugFix] Soft Eviction timer works correctly ([#52046](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/52046), [@dashpole](https://github.com/dashpole))

### CLI Improvements
- The kubectl's api-resource command now has a `--sort-by` flag to sort resources by name or kind. ([#81971](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/81971), [@laddng](https://github.com/laddng))

* kubectl: fixes regression in --sort-by behavior ([#71805](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/71805), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt))

  * More expressive node affinity syntax, and support for “soft” node affinity.
Node selectors (to constrain pods to schedule on a subset of nodes) now support
the operators {<code>In, NotIn, Exists, DoesNotExist, Gt, Lt</code>}  instead of just conjunction of exact match on node label values. In
addition, we’ve introduced a new “soft” kind of node selector that is just a

- Add possibility to configure controller manager to use IPv6 dual stack:
  use `--cluster-cidr="<cidr1>,<cidr2>"`.
  Notes:
  1. Only the first two CIDRs are used (soft limits for Alpha, might be lifted later on).
  2. Only the "RangeAllocator" (default) is allowed as a value for `--cidr-allocator-type`. Cloud allocators are not compatible with IPv6 dual stack

### Avoiding Collisions in IP allocation to Services

Kubernetes 1.24 introduced a new opt-in feature that allows you to
[soft-reserve a range for static IP address assignments](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/service/#service-ip-static-sub-range)
to Services.

- Fixed bug where kubectl top pod output is not sorted when --sort-by and --containers flags are used together ([#93692](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/93692), [@brianpursley](https://github.com/brianpursley)) [SIG CLI]

- The `matchLabelKeys/mismatchLabelKeys` feature is introduced to the hard/soft `PodAffinity/PodAntiAffinity`. ([#116065](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/116065), [@sanposhiho](https://github.com/sanposhiho))