Electronic – Resistor technologies that guarantee failure mode of OPEN and not short–need docs to prove

Strong means low resistance. Weak means high resistance. Of course low and high are relative terms, and so are strong and weak. The reference for this relationship must be inferred from context.

A strong or low resistance pull-up/down resistor is good because the time constant formed the load capacitance (often, the input gate capacitance, and the PCB trace capacitance) is small, so rise/fall times will be short.

A strong pull-up/down resistor is good because noise currents from unintended coupling and EMI will result in smaller noise voltages. (Think about Ohm's law)

A weak or high resistance pull-up/down resistor is good because it will not require much current from the driving circuitry to work against the resistor. Batteries will thus last longer, parts can be smaller and don't get as hot.

Of course, you usually want all of these things, but a resistor can't be both. A discussion about strong vs. weak is usually clarifying which of these concerns (or perhaps others) are more important for a particular application.

Let's go through your list of options.

1. Voltage divider wouldn't work. Usually, the textbook voltage divider assumes that the output voltage is measures with an open circuit. In you case, there will be a load with a varying current. Output voltage of the divider will depend on the load and will not be regulated.
2. Series diodes. You have already found the weakness of this approach: regulation is not very good.
3. Voltage regulator is the right method for doing this. If you use a linear regulator, then the power dissipation will be P = (5V - 3.3V) * 0.16A = 0.272 W. This is manageable. TO-92 package, for example, can dissipate 0.5 W.
   A switch-mode step down regulator (buck) will dissipate even less.