Why does 4.1 check for updates every time you hit the dashboard

It appears that with the introduction of 4.1 WordPress is going out and checking for updates with every load of the admin page. We can tell, because we have https: issues and we see the warnings every time it does so.

The culprit appears to be in the wp_get_update_data() function where two update calls were added in 4.1:

function wp_get_update_data() {
$counts = array( ‘plugins’ => 0, ‘themes’ => 0, ‘wordpress’ => 0, ‘translations’ => 0 );

if ( $plugins = current_user_can( ‘update_plugins’ ) ) {
wp_update_plugins(); // Check for Plugin updates
$update_plugins = get_site_transient( ‘update_plugins’ );
if ( ! empty( $update_plugins->response ) )
$counts[‘plugins’] = count( $update_plugins->response );
}

if ( $themes = current_user_can( ‘update_themes’ ) ) {
wp_update_themes(); // Check for Theme updates
$update_themes = get_site_transient( ‘update_themes’ );
if ( ! empty( $update_themes->response ) )
$counts[‘themes’] = count( $update_themes->response );
}

This would be around lines 523-526 in update.php. This causes our site to slow to a crawl as it waits for the https: calls to time out.

Does anyone know why the update regimen was changed?