version check issues

[j-d-carmichael]

Describe the bug
it used to use npm version check npm package which was configured to pull the version from github - github on occasion would just hang.

To Reproduce
add it back in: 106ff89

Expected behavior
doesn't hang

There should be a more reliable option.

Note from @zewish idea might be to inject some sort of date based cache buster - but there might be a more official method.