Facebook\WebDriver\Exception\WebDriverCurlException: Curl error thrown for http POST to /session/… with params: {“type”:“browser”}

I've been doing headless / non-headless tests (Browser is Chrome) using Laravel Dusk( version: Laravel Framework 5.8.37). Our code is in PhpStorm (version: PHP 7.2.33). I use macOS Catalina version 10.15.7. I haven't had this error until this morning:

Facebook\WebDriver\Exception\WebDriver CurlException: Curl error thrown for http POST to /session/...... with params: {"type":"browser"} Operation timed out after 30000 milliseconds with 0 bytes received

I went through a lot of the forums that have answers to similar problems. What I tried:

1. https://github.com/staudenmeir/dusk-updater currently my dusk version of chrome is the same as the browser: % php artisan dusk:update 86 ChromeDriver binaries successfully updated to version 86.0.4240.22. this is dusk and the browser is "...Google Chrome is up to date Version 86.0.4240.193 (Official Build) (x86_64)..."

2. I also tried https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/testing/this-version-of-chromedriver-only-supports-chrome-version-74 with no success.

The other answers I found in the other forums didn't seem to be relevant to my issue.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to fix this? Tks