Latest release is 0.35.4
The timeout is likely caused by network problems between Metabase and Postgres. There’s no difference in the timeout between any of those versions. You can adjust the timeout if you know there might be more than 5 seconds initialization:
https://github.com/metabase/metabase/blob/master/docs/operations-guide/environment-variables.md#mb_db_connection_timeout_ms
Not sure why everything was blank after upgrade, but I’m sure there’s more errors than TypeError: items is null
My first guess is that you’re using a proxy and it’s doing something it shouldn’t:
https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/troubleshooting-guide/proxies.html