How does R Studio source the list of packages available for update?

I'm working on an installation of RStudio that does not appear to accurately track if a package can be updated.

For instance:

I go to the "packages" tab, then click "update". I see three packages:

packageUpdate

However, just from checking things manually today I have found that:
BH is installed as 1.62.0-1, and 1.65.0-1 was released two months ago
rgdal was installed as 1.2-12 however can be (and has been) updated manually via install.packages("rgdal") to 1.2-13

I'm sure there are others as well. My questions are:
How does RStudio inform the "Update available" list, and how can I modify my installation to what (I assume) is the correct behavior of and 'up to date' set of updates?

What version of R are you using? Are you by any chance using an older version of R for which the binary versions of packages are frozen / no longer updated?

I believe RStudio is using the binary repositories when checking what packages are available here; it'd be helpful if you could confirm that's the case.

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Relatively recent I believe: R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30) -- "Single Candle". How can I check if it's using the binary repositories? As opposed to the source I presume? Is that something I can consciously swap between?