After a new dev install of this release I was going through the normal host changes. It turns out if you enable whitespace filtering without making a single modification to the install you'll get a nice .net error and the app is dead. Only way to recover is to modify the table manually to turn it off, restore or start over. Be careful with this setting until it is addressed. 
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Stack Trace:
[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.]
DotNetNuke.HttpModules.Compression.WhitespaceFilter.Write(Byte[] buf, Int32 offset, Int32 count) +104
System.Web.HttpWriter.Filter(Boolean finalFiltering) +251
System.Web.HttpResponse.FilterOutput() +85
System.Web.CallFilterExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +46
System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +64
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Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.832; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.832